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ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 


A NOCTURNE 




James Lafayette Hutchison 


ONE- 

TWO- 

THREE- 

FOUR 


A Nocturne 



BOSTON 


Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company 

*935 


























Copyright, 1935, by 

JAMES LAFAYETTE HUTCHISON 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be re¬ 
produced in any form without permission in writing 
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes 
to quote brief passages in connection with a review 
written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper. 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


©01 h 85345 

AUG — o 1935 



K 


X 





ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 


A NOCTURNE 





1 


The night was warm and weighted with a 
sul\y heaviness. Chlo \ic\ed down the sheet 

one foot after the other. She jer\ed her body 
slantwise across the bed and sighed with re¬ 
lief at the delicious coolness of a spot her 
legs had found, hitherto untouched. Now, 
she said, and her lips pressed together in a 
straight line of determination, I shall put 
everything out of my mind and go to sleep. 
From the bed on the opposite side of the 
Queen Anne lowboy came the sound of 
breathing, slow, rhythmical. Chlo sat up 
abruptly and peered through the darkness, 

[ 3 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

holding her breath as she struggled to dis¬ 
tinguish the features of the sleeper . She 
punched her pillow viciously, fell bac\ on 
her bed, rolled over, drew up her legs, 
\ic\ed them straight, turned carefully on 
her side . Now, she whispered to herself de¬ 
fiantly, I shall go to sleep; at once. 

One — two — three — four . . . count, that’s 
right, count away. I’ll be using Kaffee Hag or 
trying Ovaltine next. Or some sort of suggestion 
or will power. They seem plausible. Usually, 
the more plausible the more lacking in truth. 
That’s a good line. What was it? The more 
plausi— rot! I’m forever trying to convince my¬ 
self that I’m clever, that’s all. I feel superior to 
such ideas. Crowds swallow them whole. There¬ 
fore, without thinking or questioning, right or 
wrong, I can’t accept them. 

Yet it’s just like Christian Science or — or psy¬ 
choanalysis: they all have sound healthy bodies 
if you tear off all their funny-fitting clothes. But 
what do I know about it? Nothing. I’ve never 
even read the Bible through. And have I ever 
read a single book on Christian Science? No. 
I can see things simply, though. Why, oh, why 
do I keep on that way? Back and forth — hot 

[4] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

and cold. I’m afraid with myself I might be 
banal. Iknal or bamzl? Ho — not sure how to 
pronounce it. I’ll have to look it up to-morrow 
— I might start to use it and mispronounce be¬ 
fore some one. There I go — thinking always of 
what others may think about me. Not that I’d 
ever want to know for the word’s sake. Dear 
Lord, is there no escape? Whoa — what’s this? 
Dear Lord. Bah. When I don’t even believe — 
heroics, pure emotion. Go to sleep. Forget your¬ 
self for once. One — two — three — four. . . . 

Lonesome. Why do I always feel alone? I 
can’t sleep when I feel lonesome. I wonder if I 
ate anything. That’s usually the trouble. Let’s 
see, what did I eat ? Lonesome — it didn’t bother 
me when I was young. Young. That’s good. And 
I just twenty-nine. Old woman. Twenty-nine. 
Gordon wouldn’t have loved me if my body 
weren’t beautiful. Twenty-nine and a beautiful 
body. That’s a funny thing: beauty lasts but 
my body won’t. How’s that? Beauty is truth 
and truth . . . why is beauty truth ? Is it ? Every 
day a new truth murders an old one. How can 
any one believe anything beyond a few scientific 
facts? I’m thinking all in circles. Facts don’t 
explain lonesomeness. A man lies right there and 
an old woman of twenty-nine lies here. One 
million miles apart. I am alone. Alone and for- 

[ 5 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

sak— hello, that doesn’t make sense. He loves 
me and my body and everything about me. He 
says he loves me. He acts as if he does. What 
do I feel? I become irritated, I grow angry. 
Where’s love ? I am alone and lonesome. I 
am married two months. Almost two months. 
Months and years. Now I’m tied down. A wife. 
Silly, I am not tied down. But I am lonesome. 
I was lonesome before. I am lonesome now. 
Lonesomeness is wanting what you don’t want. 
Gordon loves me. His hands caress. They are 
artist’s hands, long and slender. 

Long graceful fingers firm and elastic. Last 
year when he ran smack into my umbrella and 
scattered my books all over the wet sidewalk, 
I recognized his long slender hands picking 
them up before he straightened and I saw his 
face. Eight years hadn’t changed his hands. He 
hadn’t changed, I thought. Guadella — Guedalla 
— Guadella said the child is not, except in fables, 
the father to the man. A sacrifice on the altar 
of paradox, I said when I read it. I know what 
he meant. Gordon loves long slender lines. He 
loves me. Wet sidewalks. ... I wanted to 
throw myself into his arms. I wonder if that 
was repression. We shook hands. Oh, I was 
physically and mentally glad to see him. I was 
constrained and I think I turned red. I felt red. 

[ 6 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

I know it was repression. Cordie always said my 
words were stiff and self-conscious. Oh — oh — 
why was I such an idiot? Self-conscious. Repres¬ 
sion again. Or was it? I’m sick of Freud this 
and Freud that and all the jargon that goes with 
it. Cordie and Willa every night for two whole 
years misreading dreams and gabbing Freud and 
repression. Well I did, too. Repression! Intro¬ 
version! Words. Why should I have turned red? 
I hate emotion. Yet I’m full of it — inside of me 
— in spite of me. Bundles of emotion criss¬ 
crossing. I can’t be different. Every one must 
be that way. I’ve never wanted a man but I’ve 
always wanted love. I was missing something. 
Admit it. Admit it. I was just afraid to take it. 

— Chlo! It is you, Chlo, and you’re the first 
beautiful thing I’ve seen since I left Paris. Come 
drink tea and dry out and talk. I want to take 
a good long draught of you. — 

We went to the Biltmore. He halted me in the 
lobby for an instant and stared at the men and 
women seated in the alcove dividing their time 
between scanning every newcomer and glancing 
furtively at their watches. The morgue, he said, 
of the dead rendezvous. He laughed silently. 
Gordon always laughs silently. His laugh is warm 
and intimate. It seems intimate. It isn’t. Funny. 
I thought it was then. His laugh is like his words: 

[7] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

they are warm and personal. His voice is soft 
and pitched low. When he speaks he is thinking 
of something else, of his painting, of my ankle, 
my breast. I know. Gordon shuts the door to 
the back room of his mind. Perhaps loving too 
many women did that. They are all mistresses 
to him. But I close the window to him on many 
parts of my mind. Every one closes a window or 
a door else she’d freeze to death in her nakedness. 
I’d never lived with a man — except in thought. 
Why should Gordon and I be the same? Minds 
can’t meet below a certain point. That’s it I 
think. I think Gordon is lonesome too. He has 
loved too many women and I have thought of 
too many men. We are not closer than that. 

We talked and talked. Gordon talked and I 
listened. He talked and I studied him and wanted 
him and was nervous. I wanted him nervously 
and in a panic. I had wanted some one for so 
long. My mind refused to follow his soft low 
words. It jumped away to thoughts of him and 
I forced it back again and again to follow his 
soft low words. A gray haired woman and a 
sleek young man had a table near us. They 
didn’t talk. They danced every dance. They 
were bored when they sat. I tried to shove Gor¬ 
don’s body from my mind and I looked at 
them. What did Gordon say ? What was it ? He 

[ 8 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

stopped talking and smiled intimately. I almost 
jumped. He said, she pays him to dance and sulk 
for her; lots of old girls do; they simply must 
have their man by hook or crook. I nodded cyn¬ 
ically. I felt red again and embarrassed. Not at 
what he said. I knew that. But when he said it 
I was trying to shove from my mind the want¬ 
ing of a man, too. Ugh — she was scrawny. Man 
— man — man — is there nothing else? Would 
it have been the same if I’d married Gordon ten 
years before? Does every one’s mind run amuck 
as mine? 

Gordon talked of Italy and his work. Two years 
of France and six years in Italy! He told of how 
he had worked living almost on nothing. Study¬ 
ing and painting with barely enough to eat. But 
now — he was intensely eager about but now . 
His voice glowed. His eagerness stirred me phys¬ 
ically. He was so intense and alive. Now he 
had a reputation. Not a wide one. But spreading 
in greater, greater circles. But what was I doing, 
what had I been doing, how had I kept so young 
and — why you’re like an eighteen-year-old flap¬ 
per, he said, only you’re much lovelier than any 
unbaked flapper could be. I said, ta bouche, bebe, 
and was afraid when he laughed that the expres¬ 
sion was, too shopworn. Uncertainty. I am always 
uncertain. I think I’ve known too many clever 

[ 9 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

people. They’re clever because they’re afraid of 
cleverness themselves and after a while they make 
their friends afraid of everything too, except stu¬ 
pidity. I’m not so sure. I told him I had done 
many things since leaving home eight years be¬ 
fore. I had returned only twice. Home bored 
and angered me now. Too many bungalows, 
too much country club, too much gossip. The 
girls I had run with were mothers: the profes¬ 
sion of Southern women. The men — well. . . . 
I threw out my hands. I remember that. I didn’t 
say I was lonesome. 

I wanted Gordon to think me clever and cyn¬ 
ical. I say to myself that I hate cleverness. I 
say I hate cynicism: the pitiful excuse that sensi¬ 
tive and shallow minds make for their disap¬ 
pointment in life. Yet Anatole France was both 
clever and cynical, so was Schopenhauer, so was 
de Gourmont, and Meredith. I don’t mean that 
kind, though. I mean this word twisting and sense 
twisting, and “he was that kind . . .” “and you 
know they’re like . . .” attitudes and saying 
something raw and being casual about it. I mean 
something like that. Rot. I don’t know what I 
do mean. I’m trying to be clever now. Gordon 
thinks I’m clever. 

What was I thinking about? Gordon’s smooth 
skin. No. No. No. We were in the Biltmore. 

[ 10 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

I was thinking of Gordon’s smooth skin. I was 
not. Yes I was. I don’t care. He didn’t pay much 
attention to what I said about home. He asked 
me again what I had been doing for the past 
eight years. 

— Like almost every woman, Gordon, I’ve 
hopped from one thing to another. I thought I 
was going to be a great writer but the master¬ 
piece is still unborn. I’ve been secretary to the 
editor of a woman’s magazine and reader on the 
same magazine. I left to edit a story magazine. 
A terrible thing. From three to six men shot 
dead in every story. Then press agent for a movie 
actor. Now I’m writing advertising. A career 
of bunk so far, but a life-saver in these hard times. 
Not all bunk either because — 

— Publicity work. Then you can help me pull 
a few strings. I’m going to need a little publicity 
here. My income has been shot to pieces. The 
professionals know my work, but no one seems 
to be buying now. I’d even do portraits. — 

That was a surprise to me. And it hurt. I was 
casual and modest in my attempt to impress him. 
I thought he was interested in what I was doing. 
He acted as if he were deeply interested when 
I was talking. He looked so intimate. But he 
was interested in me only as it touched him. His 
mind had been poised waiting to alight on some- 

[Hi 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

thing he could immediately attach to himself. 
His warm smile and grave gray eyes always leave 
the impression that he is wholly absorbed in me. 
When he’s not. I didn’t think of that then. 
Why didn’t I think of it? But what difference 
would it have made ? None. I’m the same as he. 
So is every one. Do I think of him ever except in 
relation to myself? Mostly I think of him and 
myself close, close together. His skin is smooth 
and clear, not rough and hairy like that of so 
many men. I would have loved to touch his 
smooth skin. 

— I’ll be glad to do anything I can, Gordon. 
It hasn’t taken you long to get back your grasp 
on the customs of the country. Press agents and 
machinery. Only a press agent or a reporter can 
read a newspaper intelligently any more.— 

— Please, Ohio, dear, don’t be so damnedly 
cynical. You know what I mean. I can paint. 
The one thing I can really do. And I’ve got to 
get recognition some way. This depression has 
got me pretty low. And even a painter must 
live — if possible. But let’s go up to the studio 
and have dinner there. We can’t ruin this lovely 
reunion day without a dinner. There are millions 
of things to talk over. Oh, how good it is to be 
with you again. — 

His eyes and voice glowed softly, intimately. 

[12] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

I accepted his invitation. It was more of a com¬ 
mand than an invitation. All of Gordon’s invi¬ 
tations are commands. Gently couched and final, 
as if to do anything else were out of the question. 
His gentle finality always appealed to me, made 
me want to stretch out my hand and touch his 
face. It appeals to me now when I know it is 
simply a childish, wilful streak in his nature. And 
even now it makes me feel close to him. To get 
close. In mind, in flesh. I felt that hungrily 
then. But I feel it now, too. Are all women who 
work and think for themselves that way? Is 
Cordelia — big striding Cordie with her keen effi¬ 
cient manner and her loud ready laugh, Cordie 
with her terrible hats and awful colors — is 
Cordie ever hungry at night? I wonder. Yes, 
she must writhe at night sometimes, too. 

I accepted Gordon’s invitation. I had an en¬ 
gagement but did not tell him. I broke it over 
the telephone when I went out supposedly to 
powder my nose. Powder puffs and cigarettes; 
enlightened conventions. }. P. was furious when 
I broke his engagement. Oh, how much he is 
J. P. when he is angry. A big baby playing hard 
at grown-up. His anger ranges through carefully 
planned stages. His clients take it seriously. It 
makes me contemptuous now; it gave me a 
warm motherly superior feeling then. Over the 

[i3] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

phone he was surprised, just perceptibly hurt, 
froze up and was haughty, climbed down and 
was pleading, threw aside reserve and was “plainly 
frank”, ended curt and frigidly polite. The same 
technique he would use on a client. I loved it 
then; it was amusing. He was so serious and his 
mind so young. Sometimes I hate him. He plans 
everything. Every time he proposed I thought 
of his flesh and the touch of his coarse heavy 
skin. Why does that affect me? Most men are 
made with coarse hairy skins. He’s so horribly 
successful. He gets the best seats at shows, the 
best tables at restaurants. It pleases him. He ex¬ 
pands. I like good seats and tables too. What a 
baby he was. And still is. And so many, many of 
him in the world. But, oh dear, sometimes I do 
hate him. When he hung up on me I laughed. 

In the telephone booth I stood for half a minute 
without moving. Curious, how often I recall that. 
Stage fright? The uneasiness of anticipation? A 
pleasant tingling sensation mixed with a vague 
dread. It shoots through me now to recall it. 
Oo — oo — I love it. So often I’ve had that feel¬ 
ing. At night when I imagined a man taking 
me in his arms. At a melodrama in the middle 
of the second act. Sometimes discussing psycho¬ 
analysis with Cordie and Willa. I stood at the 
phone booth and wondered what it would be 

[14] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

like to caress Gordon’s skin. Gordon had been in 
my thoughts so much during the past few years. 
More each year. My thoughts? No —mydream- 
ings. I started back to the tea room. The switch¬ 
board girl called after me, hey lady you forgot 
to pay. She mumbled under her breath. The 
jerk back to realities embarrassed me. But the 
tingling and dread did not disappear. At the 
entrance of the room I stopped and pretended 
to search in my bag. I took a deep breath and 
scolded myself before I had the courage to join 
him. Why am I like that? Why? Why? There 
was no reason. Yes there was. I wanted him. I 
had imagined myself with him, many times in 
many ways. Now he was here — near me — flesh 
and blood to touch — and to know. I was glad 
and I was very much afraid. 

In the cab Gordon held my hand. We were 
laughing and talking rapidly, interrupting each 
other. I hardly realized he had taken my hand 
and was holding it. He did it naturally. The nat¬ 
uralness, the intimacy gave me a comfortable 
glow. Suddenly the thought struck me that only 
long practise and habit could have taught him 
to take my hand so naturally and beautifully. 
And I was flooded with anger. Anger that 
stabbed me. Unreasonable jealousy. I took my 
hand away as if to reach for my handkerchief. 

[ 15 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

And as suddenly my anger turned against my¬ 
self. Of course he had held hands — thousands 
of times. I! I who pride myself on my broad¬ 
mindedness, on recognizing life’s facts. Don’t be 
a fool, I said to myself, face such a simple fact 
as this. You’ve held hands with many men and 
kissed them. The only reason you haven’t lived 
with any is — well — you were afraid. Is there 
anything else? No. Curiosity held in leash by 
fear. I’ve never had moral scruples to bind me. 
Why should I have been jealous? Could my im¬ 
agination already have taken possession of him as 
of my own property? I slipped my hand back 
into his and was ashamed. 

What a surprise was his studio. I had seen so 
many — ranging from cheap garrets littered with 
odds and ends of furniture, broken down sofas, 
battered chairs of different periods, stools and 
tables, with dust bedraggled drapes and stacks of 
sketches, old magazines, all confusion — to the 
carefully thought out untidy richness of success¬ 
ful portrait painters. But Gordon’s was new to 
me. It was like his hands, his long slender fin¬ 
gers. Clean. Scrupulously clean and neat and 
ascetic. He is not an artist but a scientist who 
paints and dreams — a sensual ascetic whose 
Christ is beauty and passion. I am sure he is. 
Two straight-backed Carolean chairs, an easy 

[16] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

chair by a standing lamp, a plain oval drop-leaf 
table holding a few books and magazines, a few 
canvases in one corner, his big easel in the cen¬ 
ter with a small stand for palette, jars of brushes 
and tubes of paints. Bare floor, half light. Dull- 
orange walls — their bareness broken by the one 
surprising spot of vivid coloring, that sketch of 
bathing women. An austere room. In some in¬ 
tangible way sensual. The sensuality of a monk’s 
cell. The austerity of violent dreams. A place 
of visions. I wonder if the strings that draw men 
into monasteries and women into convents aren’t 
held by sensuality? Ecstasies and visions. Phys¬ 
ical austerity. Aren’t they the consummation of 
sensuality? I could become a nun. 

I sat back in his big easy chair and half closed 
my eyes. I was tired. Very tired. The strain kept 
running through my head and would not stop: 
what is it like to love a man — I want him — I 
want to feel the touch of his flesh — I want him. 
He filled my thoughts, imagination, and it left me 
weak. He talked steadily, as he arranged the oval 
table for dinner. As he passed me on his trips 
back and forth between his alcove bedroom and 
bathroom and the table, he would reach over and 
lightly brush his beautifully shaped hands over my 
hair. Once he leaned over for a second and one 
finger lingeringly caressed my cheek. It took 

[i7] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

away my breath. I wanted him to take me in his 
arms and I was deathly afraid he would. The 
waiter came with the tray of food and I sat up. 
We talked. I listened. I only half listened. Some 
of the things he said I heard. But they were far 
away. He talked of what he was trying to do, 
what he had done, his plans of himself. Him¬ 
self. He talked in a low, soft voice. I was think¬ 
ing of what it would be like to kiss him, to have 
him. I am not sure of what he said. Sometimes 
I would hear a sentence, two sentences. He 
talked. I thought of him. I wanted him. I was 
afraid. Fear. How many women are held back 
by fear? Pure fear with morals in the discard? 
Millions. If they are honest. I’m not alone. I’m 
like other women. Emotions are not different. I 
knew it was foolish emotion — fear — and yet 
time and again it stopped me. Fear of what? 
Fear I can’t define. Fear that won’t let go. Gor¬ 
don’s words flowed on, soothed and caressed me; 
his large gray eyes shone in the candle light; at 
times he leaned towards me eagerly to emphasize, 
his eyes grew larger, shone more brilliantly, 
danced out of his floating face, confused me. 
Emotions scrambled through me. But one emo¬ 
tion flings out high above the rest. It is the flute 
in “l’Apres-Midi d’un Faune” winging its way 
above the low tones of the other instruments. 

[18] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

The remaining instruments whisper fear and 
dread. I sit wanting him and fearing him without 
moving. And he talks. 

— I shall be great. Great, Chlo, do you hear ? I 
know what I can do. I know the feeling of 
power to paint. Nothing can stop me. Nothing 
can get in my way. Not women, not money. . . . 
How many real painters have we to-day? Six 
or eight perhaps. No more. They rush, they try 
to skip. You can’t skip, Chlo. Or they fall back 
on imitation. To-day they all talk glibly about ex¬ 
pressionism, subjective realism, subjective idealism, 
sur-realism. A few years ago it was impression — 
with its lame drooling offsprings: post-impression¬ 
ism, cubism, futurism, vorticism, dadaism, and 
what-not. A lot of isms . Most of them are 
mere bags of tricks. Tricks of technique. Im¬ 
pressionism was leading us into decadence — a 
passing phase that always rides the waves of new 
movements. But it drowns itself in the end. 
True, it was a great discovery that there were ac¬ 
tually brilliant colors in the world and that they 
could be transferred to canvas. Monet and his 
coterie gave something to art, of course. But after 
all, Cezanne and Renoir are the only two paint¬ 
ers of the last hundred years who have advanced 
painting one step forward. Do you know why? 
Because they were searching for more than tricks 

[i9] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

of technique. They were searching for motives. 
Some critics call it “significant form” others say, 
“expressionism” — this hidden motif that makes 
a painting. But they are beating around the bush. 
All painting has always been expressionistic to 
some degree and also impressionistic to some de¬ 
gree. 

— Here’s the whole point. In the days before 
Christ every nation from China to Greece had its 
gods — the central point of men’s lives, their be¬ 
ginning and their end, their existence. And these 
gods were the motif of their art. Then the Chris¬ 
tian religion planted the seeds of a new motif — 
seeds that flowered into the greatest period of art 
the world has yet known, culminating in the 
renascence. The motif of one god and a mother 
and her son who suffered. And from the time 
Luther flouted Rome and tarnished the surface of 
mystic faith, artists have been chasing will-o-the- 
wisps. Sometimes hit, sometimes miss. Take 
Rembrandt’s marvelous old girl paring her nails 
and then look at the smug burghers he turned 
to. And look at the regularity of the despairing 
returns to the classical — so called. And, oh 
lord, the running around in circles to find a new 
formula to take the place of the church. First 
came romanticism! Back to nature just as so 
many to-day preach the primitive. And then the 

[ 20 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

reaction to reality — or the myriad of little details 
they mistook for reality. And of course what 
should follow but impressionism — the most natu¬ 
ral revulsion in the world from petty realism. 
And the world grew sick of them all — the classic, 
the romantic, the realistic — a tired world into 
which decadence crept and bred cynicism and 
chaos. But a passing phase. The day of deca¬ 
dence is ending. Do you see what I’m driving at, 
Chlo ? I’ve got the answer. That’s it. And it’s too 
simple for words. That’s the reason it’s over¬ 
looked so steadily. Cezanne had it, probably with¬ 
out knowing it. It’s the same mystic faith that 
was born with the cathedral. That’s all it is. 
But now it must do without its god and Christ. 
We must rename it. What? Rhythm, I should 
say, the rhythm of both harmony and discord; 
the rhythm that science is at last bringing us; 
the rhythm of evolution and the interlocking of 
all sciences into one; the rhythm that people once 
sought as god. Do you see, Chlo? Do you see? 
Learn from the masters of Italy, when they were 
moved by the rhythm of faith. Learn from those 
who saw straight and simply and nobly. But 
carry what you learn into to-day. I can paint, 
Chlo, do you hear? I shall paint. It’s my one 
mistress. . . . 

Slender, graceful hands. Ascetic face lit with 

[ 21 ] 


ONE — TWO — THREE — FOUR 

shining eyes. Yet appealing and sensual from 
head to foot. It is peculiar, the faint aroma of 
sensuality surrounding this confessed martyr. 
Fin de siecle and Confessions of a Young Man, 
flashed through my mind. And all through the 
evening afterwards, I remember fin de siecle 
coursed back and forth, a gentle chant across my 
consciousness. But they never fit: his words and 
himself. I see him always with the beautiful 
hands and great soft eyes of the Christ of El 
Greco. How I could have loved that Christ. El 
Greco must have been half woman to see him 
so clearly and truly. A Christ who is a dreamer, 
a neurotic, burnt with passions until he must cry 
aloud over the sharp pain dealt him. The pain 
of suppressed passions. It must be these, to make 
leaders and drivers of such men. Gordon and his 
cry for honest painting. They were men, those 
fifteenth century painters, he said. He is slender 
and graceful, and almost effeminate and he felt 
the manhood of these renascence masters. He 
found there what he was not. Is that it? Is it? 
They cry for something that cannot be? I think 
so. For a moment I glimpsed the inner life of 
Christ complete and whole. And it passed. They 
always pass, these moments, and I can’t recall 
them, they were never in words. Moments lost 
before they are found. But Gordon. ... I wanted 

[22] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

4 

to weep. I wanted to — I choke now. I won’t. I 
won’t. 

He is beautiful in the candle light. He ruffles 
his hair with his long artistic fingers. He leans 
towards me and grips the arms of his straight- 
backed Carolean chair. He jumps up abruptly 
and strides back and forth two or three paces. He 
is beautiful in the candle light. He throws him¬ 
self on the arm of my easy chair, stretches out 
his long legs, drops his left arm across my shoul¬ 
ders. I shrink at the touch. And recover. I 
want his arm there. It makes me tremble. I 
want him so much. But I’m afraid. He is abrupt 
and quick and surprising in his movements. I 
don’t know what he will do next. It frightens 
me. He is making love to me. This is the pro¬ 
logue; he is preparing to make love to me. I am 
sure of it. I feel it is an instinctive game he is 
playing. It frightens me; and angers me because 
it frightens me. I don’t know how to play it as 
he does. I’ve never had men make love to me 
in this gentle roundabout way. I wonder if Gor¬ 
don knows, I wonder if he knows himself how 
much of a game he is playing when he plays it. 
I’ve never been sure. Does he work up his mo¬ 
ments or does instinct give him the thrill of real 
emotion? Questions. Always doubts and ques¬ 
tions. 


[23] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

— You are lovely, Chlo, he said casually. You 
were lovely as a young girl. Nineteen, weren’t 
you, or twenty ? That was a funny time. George! 
I was head over heels in love with you, wasn’t I ? 
But then I doubt if I ever got over it completely. 
You were in my mind so much such a long time 
afterwards. I was determined to show you. That 
made me work like the very devil. ... You were 
so right, Chlo. But you were so damned clear 
headed and superior it made me boil. It’s taken 
me years to reach the maturity you had then. . . . 
The same serene Chlo, just as beautiful as ever. 
You were a darling to give this evening to me. 
I think I’ve missed you during these years. . . . 
I know I have . . . very much. . . . It’s so good 
to have you here now. . . . 

He leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. 
Just a light touch. But it did something. What? 
It was confusion, dizziness. A delicious feeling. 
But all the dread in the world was behind it. 
I jumped up. And we stood facing each other. 
I had had the same curious feeling before. But 
not of this strength. I wanted to drop on the 
floor and lie there. Give up and lie down and 
forget everything. I was weak and trembling and 
could hardly hold open my eyes. It was delicious 
and dreadful. Gordon took a step toward me. His 
eyes were shining. Differently. I could not think. 

[24] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

I tried to. I was beating him off but my arms 
were motionless at my sides. I knew what was 
coming. I wanted to stop him and I wanted him 
to come. His arms were around me and he was 
close against me, from his face to his ankles, press¬ 
ing closely against me. He pressed his half open 
lips against mine. And we stood there. How 
long? I should have fallen had he released me. 
We stood there. I don’t know my feelings. I like 
to recall it ... oh ... oh . . . 

Gordon gently seated me on the edge of the 
chair. He was on his knees beside me. One of 
his hands grasped mine and the other stroked 
my face, gently. . . . His voice was hesitant, gasp¬ 
ing, slow. 

— Stay with me to-night, Chlo. I shall love 
you so beautifully. I love you, Chlo . . . very 
much indeed. Stay with me and let me love you. 
You are beautiful, Chlo . . . I’ve loved you so 
long ... so very, very long, Chlo . . . my 
dreams ... I love you ... I will love you so 
beautifully. . . . 

Perhaps his words were vaguely reminiscent. 
I don’t know. They were familiar, cut and dried 
as a formula. He did not speak them as a for¬ 
mula. The undercurrent was formula. I seemed 
to have gone through it all dozens of times before. 
I hadn’t though. Why should I feel that way? 

[^ 5 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

I wish that I had stayed. I would like to have it 
to recall. I wish that I had stayed. 

I left. He let me go. He was gentle. He kissed 
me good night. I wish that I had stayed. I 
wish, wish, wish that I had stayed. 


[26] 


2 


Chlo lay flat on her stomach, her face buried 
in the pillow. Her body was stretched out 
rigidly straight. Her hands were clenched 
tightly. For a long time she lay in this tense 
position, unyielding as a rod of steel. But 
almost automatically exhaustion forced her 
into complete relaxation, and with a sigh she 
turned over to relieve the discomfort of her 
strained nec\. From the nearby bed heavy, 
even breathing continued monotonously its 
slow rhythmic course. 

Sleep. I must stop this sort of thing and get 
to sleep. I’ll feel rotten to-morrow morning. One 

[27] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

— two — three — four — but I wish I had stayed. 
I wish — day dreaming at night. This resolve to 
put aside dreams and go to sleep. Pushing aside 
the resolution and deliberately calling up pic¬ 
tures. What a terrible thing it is. The same 
monotonous routine as a Ford employee pulling 
the same lever all day long. Where did I read 
about lever pulling? Havelock Ellis. Havelock. 
A stern name. It goes beautifully with a white 
beard. No. Not Havelock Ellis. Chase. That 
was it. Stuart Chase. I wish I had stayed with 
Gordon. I wish — I won’t. Stuart Chase and 
Ford workers pulling levers and going to the 
movies. I never did finish that article. I must 
finish it to-morrow. I won’t though. I never 
finish articles. Books either. I pretend I do. I can 
talk about them. But I never finish anything. 
Why should I? Where would it lead? Things 
move so swiftly and it’s so hopeless, so utterly 
hopeless. Like J. P. and his radio. The drivel he 
listened to night after night and never tired of. 
I think it’s the wheels going around that pleases 
him so. And it makes him feel “modern” to 
know all about new gadgets. He can’t really like 
that rot. But it only bores me to think of me¬ 
chanics and watch wheels go round. What do 
I want? I want, let me see, I want — I don’t 
know what I want. I’ve never known. This road 

[28] 


j 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

and that and a few steps down each grow tire¬ 
some. I can only come back again and again to 
love. I don’t believe in it but I can’t leave it. 
Damn. What an assinine mixture. But I wish I 
had stayed. That’s a lie. I don’t, really. 

The joy I actually might have had could never 
match the idea of what I think it might have 
been. I don’t believe it could for it never has. 

But oh, he was beautiful that night. He was 
such a beautiful living lie. As I am every hour 
I’m awake. He was so impassioned about his 
art, so tender and tense in his plea of love. He 
was honest in both when he was talking and act¬ 
ing them with such fervor. But they were lies 
just the same. Perhaps at bottom we under¬ 
stand each other. I become excited over this 
or that. I tremble with convictions. I speak 
rapidly believing every word I say. Lies. After¬ 
wards they are lies. Later I question the thoughts 
and emotions I had when I was speaking; and I 
find they were lies. All the time I was really in 
the background watching myself and wondering. 
Gordon with his slight body and his slender 
graceful hands. He makes believe with his talk 
of masters who were men and he believes when he 
talks it. But oh, Gordon dear, I am like that too, 
and darling, what misery you must suffer at 
times. Rare times. For we are nimble minded and 

[29] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

juggle our ideas of truth very neatly, we make- 
believers. 

Yes. We understood each other from the mo¬ 
ment I recognized his hands grasping my bun¬ 
dles on the wet sidewalk and he glanced up at 
me. Even at that moment I felt him mentally 
and physically. I wanted him then. 

But that night when I left you. When you had 
closed the door of your studio after me. And in 
a daze I walked the two blocks to Broadway for 
a taxi. And the harsh brilliance of the electric 
lights and crowded streets. People jostling and 
lights. What a curious quality of dream. My 
face was hot and I shivered. And at the curb I 
stood staring — how long ? — before I remem¬ 
bered that I was there to stop a taxi. The crowds 
flowing past, the motor horns, the flashing signs, 
I recall now so vividly. For then they played 
tricks with me. They were all in the distance, 
miles away, only faintly then, and I stood alone 
with my face warm and my body cold and every 
incident of the evening flying through my brain 
at breakneck speed. Yet even now I smile at the 
overlapping thought that whirled into the midst 
of the others, when I came to and finally held up 
a taxi. If, I said to myself, it had been any other 
man in the world, he would either have thought 
to phone for a cab to call at the door or gone out 

[30] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

himself to fetch it. The thought lost itself in the 
maelstrom of my mind and imparted a delicious 
warmth. It was a part of your sweet selfish self, 
Gordon, to forget. It gave me a closer under¬ 
standing of you and only made you dearer. For I, 
too, am like that. Unselfish, consciously; but at 
bottom, my dear, my dear, how bitterly thought¬ 
less and selfish we both are. 

All through the night I lay wanting you. 
Neither asleep nor awake, but tossed back and 
forth between the two. Exquisite torment of 
emotions. Without thought or even active wish. 
Only a kaleidoscope of rapidly shifting scenes. 
Gordon and I. Fragments of his speech. The 
feel of his kisses. That is when love surges 
through one. In the night when it is black dark 
and one is alone and imagination rules. That is 
when the full force of love is felt. It is the 
tragedy of life, of my life. That the most ex¬ 
quisite realization of beauty should come only as 
an epilogue — a monologue of the imagination 
when the play is finished and the lights dimmed. 
What a ridiculously tragic world. Or do I merely 
make it tragic with my own self-pity? Cordie 
always said, tragedy, my eye, only idiots who re¬ 
fuse to face realities are infected by tragedy — 
ha! tragedy indeed, only repression gives birth 
to tragedy. But Cordie is crammed with Freud 

[3i] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

and Jung. She eats and drinks them. If she 
felt the tragedy of life she would immediately 
manufacture a complex as the cause and her ad¬ 
miration at her own introspective skill would 
drive tragedy out of existence. Everything is sex, 
she says. I don’t believe it. Not everything. I’m 
not sure what isn’t; but not everything. It’s the 
biggest thing but it can’t be back of everything 
in life. Not everything. There’s something some¬ 
where more than merely birth and life, something 
more than procreation and conception. What is 
it ? Where is it ? In art ? In music ? In business ? 
In religion? In none of these. In longing and 
lonesomeness for something that is not ? No. No. 
These least of all. There, where I would leave 
sex behind, it stares me in the face and leers at 
me. Year after year it has grown bolder and 
leered harder. I can’t fight. It is like fighting thin 
air, only it does not dissolve or give ground. 

Why couldn’t I do like Cordie and Willa? I 
respect them. Every one I know respects them. 
Why couldn’t I have torn loose from the hands 
that held me back and have had a lover too? 
Conscience. Damn every day in the centuries 
that has added its brick to the wall of conscience. 
Damn them: damn them. I want to be myself — 
not my ancestors. And I can’t. Or is that true? 
Willa says not. She says the right food — the 

[32] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

right vitamines — will go a long way to over¬ 
come ancestors and environment. Willa and 
Cordie: McCollum and Mendel against Freud 
and Jung. Willa, slender and dark and intense, 
with her soft persistent voice, straight lines, 
straight suits, and her beautiful legs and ankles; 
Cordie big and almost shapeless, brilliant and 
loud, without one jot of taste in clothes or hats. 
Such hats! 

— Mind, Cordie, I don’t run down psycho¬ 
analysis: but I do object to the way you try to 
hang every mental abnormality on some absurd 
repression. You try to trace all human ills — 
both mental and physical — to some repressed in¬ 
stinct. Have you never wondered why it was that 
such extremely slight incidents or actions should 
so often be the start of complexes ? — 

— Yes, but, Willa dear, they only look small to 
you after they are laid bare. Almost all of our 
actions start from some small beginning that 
makes no conscious impression at the time, that 
may almost seem irrelevant. If we are to main¬ 
tain any mental freedom and independence — 

— Independence, nonsense! The way to free¬ 
dom, mental and physical, is through the proper 
vitamines. I tell you, Cordie, the greatest ad¬ 
vance in science in the next generation will be in 
dietetics. McCollum and Mendel are the first 

[33] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

men to dare dream of the vast importance diet 
plays in biology and evolution. Nine times out 
of ten low vitality and nothing else causes re¬ 
pressions. And low vitality of that kind comes 
from our diet. Food, you understand Cordie, our 
daily food. It’ll put your psyche stuff in a back 
seat. You wait — heredity and environment will 
have a sister. Some of these days evolution will in¬ 
clude heredity, environment, and diet. And diet 
will be the biggest of the lot. Diet and behavior¬ 
ism, that is. McCollum says — 

— For heaven’s sake, let up on McCollum. It 
may be as you say, Willa, but you certainly have 
no facts. And Freud has advanced every step of 
his way on case after case. And he is pointing the 
way to mental freedom and independence that’s 
going to dress this old world up in a lot of swell 
new clothes. So there, dear.— 

Independence — how Cordie and Willa love 
to argue on independence. What is indepen¬ 
dence? What has it really always been for me? 
A yoke. A yoke, in fact, that has always driven 
women into marriage — and men too, I imagine. 
Independence is the worst prison the world has 
to offer. That’s a good line. A very good line 
indeed. Ugh! I would say that. But it’s true 
nevertheless. How I wanted Gordon that night! 
And yet in spite of every fibre of me wanting 

[34] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

and willing — I couldn’t. Something held me 
back. Something has always held me back; some¬ 
thing that’s down inside that isn’t me; something 
that is habit and fear and early training — ideas 
belonging to dad and mother; things apart from 
me owning me as a slave yet never belonging 
to me. And I never had the courage to dispossess 
them. No. That was not it. It’s the outcropping 
of others in me. More and more I recognize in 
myself some weakness that as a child I saw and 
hated. 

Those days together with Gordon. What a 
delicious thrill of tender love and fear they held. 
But the next morning I am tired as if I had not 
been to bed and the back of my head ached. The 
bare ascetic studio with its one brilliant painting 
against the dull orange wall. Gordon with soft 
glowing eyes, slender caressing hands, arms and 
body pressing against mine. They were of the 
past, those things. Another girl had been there 
and it was a long time ago. Bathed and dressed. 
Cordie talking and joking, her strident voice 
harsher than usual, grating on my nerves. Over¬ 
night the cosiness of our three rooms turned to 
crowded and stuffy cells. Civilization and culture! 
Three college graduates in three little rooms 
where the sun struck only one window. American 
Mercury. Nation. New Republic. Review of 

[35] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Psychoanalysis. Freud and Jung. Morand. 
O’Neill. France and Gourmont. Faulkner and 
Madam Bovary. Point Counter Point. Dewey. 
Behaviorism. Stuart Chase. Blake. Masefield. 
Millay. Frost. The Newer Knowledge of Nutri¬ 
tion. On and on. Scattered books with scattered 
thoughts. Like a symbol of my life staring me in 
the face that morning. Impossible to stand it 
there with Cordie and Willa and those books 
smothering me. I left without breakfast and 
walked a roundabout way to the office. That far 
off dream of Gordon and the evening before in 
the back of my head and throbbing — throbbing 
— without letup. 

How maddening the office. The steady clack- 
clack of typewriters thrusting against the dull 
throb in the back of my head, intensifying it. The 
strangeness of the room. The noise and hurry 
without meaning. Why this rush, rush, rush 
day after day all for a few pages in magazines and 
newspapers? Trick pages with countless tricks 
behind them leading readers into traps; soap 
box hawkers disguised as gentlemen strolling 
down the avenue or as ladies over their tea. All 
to squeeze out one more sale. Drop. Drop. Drop. 
Like the strain of drops of water steadily dripped 
on a man’s head until he succumbs. The steady 
drip of a story until the reader buys. And all 

[36] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

this tense struggle to find the story, to find the 
right clothes to dress it in, to cut a perfect fit, to 
send it forth to smirk and flirt and make its con¬ 
quest. Research, statistics, investigations, mer¬ 
chandising, copy, layouts, art work, plates, proofs. 
Serious grown men worried and worn over a 
shade of blue in a drawing; desperate over a 
word in a headline. Like children playing adult. 
No. I’m not fair — unless we are all children, all 
playing away at this grown-up myth. Aren’t 
lawyers or doctors or politicians or writers and 
artists all playing with their mud pies in the same 
way? Aren’t they all bustling and worrying and 
working their little tricks much alike? Is there 
any difference? Aren’t they all thinking about 
their personalities and trying to impress each 
other? Women are even worse. I do it. I do it 
most when I am most ashamed of it too. And I 
am flattered when I do impress. It’s all so silly. 
Not always either. But oh, how drab and futile 
it was that morning with Gordon beating against 
the back of my brain. I wanted to think and I 
couldn’t think; I wanted to make up my mind to 
give myself up to him. I repeated to myself panic- 
stricken, I will be his mistress, I will be his mis¬ 
tress, I will be — and I was panic-stricken be¬ 
cause I knew I couldn’t. I knew it and madly 
fought to escape from the fact that was a part 

[37] 


ONE —TWO —THREE —FOUR 

of me. Oh, God, why, why have I always been 
like that? 

When the phone rang it was a shock that took 
my breath. It must be Gordon, I thought, and had 
to take two or three deep breaths before I had 
the courage to answer. His voice was soft and 
cool drifting through the phone. I could almost 
see him before me. 

— I simply had to call you up and say good 
morning, Chlo. I hope that I haven’t broken into 
a busy conference. That’s right, isn’t it? Con¬ 
ference? That’s the word in this busy country, 
I understand.— 

I couldn’t hear his laugh over the phone, but 
could feel it and see it; the warm silent laugh 
that is so personal. Yes, he would be amused at 
conference. I did not answer. I waited. 

— Anyway, I was suffering, waiting to hear 
your voice again, Chlo. I wanted to be sure that 
last night was real. You have been with me ever 
since. I say, is it all right to talk like this over 
your phone ? — 

— Yes. It’s perfectly all right. A — a splen¬ 
did line. Go on, Gordon.— 

— Well. I was wondering if we couldn’t be real 
fussy to-night and dress up and all and dine in 
style at the Colony and on to the theatre after¬ 
wards. Please say yes, Chlo dear. I — may I say 

[ 38 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

this, Chlo ? — I feel — it’s difficult to put into 
words — but I feel — well, Chlo, you’re just like 
an inspiration dropped right from the sky. I 
really must see you. Won’t you? — 

Over the phone! Gordon is an artist. I was no 
longer tired and my headache was forgotten. He 
is an artist in making love. 

— Of course, Gordon, you know I want to see 
you too. And I’ll be delighted. What time will 
you call ? — 

An inspiration, he said. An inspiration . And 
then doubts and misgivings. Was he really falling 
in love with me? An inspiration . Or was it 
merely another affair for him? Another af¬ 
fair to be cloaked and finessed and artistically 
garnished? An inspiration . How often, I won¬ 
dered, had he built a campaign around inspira¬ 
tion? Advertising is not alone guilty. All cam¬ 
paigns are built around catch-words. That big 
signboard that used to stand over Hill’s Drug 
Store slapping each passerby in the face with 
GET RIGHT WITH GOD. What a horrible 
way to sell religion. What messy things we are. 
Love has its catch-phrases too. An inspiration . 
It was so beautiful before that. It was still beau¬ 
tiful. But the sweetness of a new song was 
haunted now with too familiar strains creeping 
in from the past. I didn’t care. I wanted him, I 

[39] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

wanted him to take me in his arms as he did 
the night before. I wanted him, I wanted him. 
And the fever of excitement and the uneasiness 
of intangible emotions stayed with me through 
the day. Dread. Dread almost choked me. The 
fights that I’ve had with dread; the battles dread 
has won from me. Dread of the humdrum of 
marriage; then the dread of passion; then the 
dread of giving my body to a man; the dread of 
conscience. Then the dread of not giving myself 
to a man; then Gordon to awaken all the dreads 
anew. 

Shall I forget? That evening while I was 
dressing the idea swooped down on me. Marry 
Gordon. Marry him. Of course. Oh, dear. Even 
as I thought of it the idea also struck me that 
Gordon would never, never in the world ask me 
to marry him. And how funny that was. How 
peculiarly, terribly funny that was. It was so 
funny it hurt me all over. I sat down on the bed 
and laughed. I was an idiot. I don’t see now 
what was so funny and so tragic in that thought. 
I laughed until I thought my heart would break. 
Cordie was scared and called me names and said, 
what’s it all about? Don’t be a hysterical ass. 
Dear old Cordie. I could only look at her and 
laugh with tears running down my face. She 
sat down on the bed by my side and put her arms 

[40] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

around me and called me a sweet utter idiot 
and a precious damned fool. And then I cried. 
I cried from shame. But when I was laughing I 
felt like crying. Damn it. Thinking about it 
now makes me choky. Such an idiot! Stop 
it. . . . 

I finished dressing. But dread now played with 
a new idea. And if he only wanted a mistress — 
if he refused even to think of marrying — then 
what? What a child emotions make of you even 
when your whole brain cries out against them. 
But who knows when intellect begins and emo¬ 
tion ends? Perhaps after all it was my mind 
forcing me on, and perhaps it was emotion re¬ 
belling. Thought and emotion: they are Siamese 
twins surely. One would die without the other. 
J. P. always says to clients, let’s put aside our 
own wishes for the moment and look at this prob¬ 
lem cold-bloodedly and logically. Then he un¬ 
locks every emotional trick he has in the attempt 
to sell his own desires. How can I or any one 
else even think logically when we always have 
some wish or desire at the end of it all? I want 
my wish and I’ll have my wish first and try after¬ 
wards to prove it logical. Oh, lord, I’ll go crazy 
if my mind keeps up this silly merry-go-round. 
It doesn’t make sense. I want love. Everybody 
wants love. And that’s all they do want. If sex 

[41] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

is such a terrible thing why do men always begin 
talking and suggesting love as soon as they get a 
woman alone? Why do women spend most of 
their time thinking about their faces and their 
clothes ? I do. Cordie and Willa do. My mother 
did and she was even afraid of the word, sex. 
Sex novels. What novels aren’t sex novels? A 
man wants a woman. A woman wants a man. 
I want Gordon. And I’m afraid. What I feel and 
what I think fight. An inspiration. An inspira¬ 
tion. Gordon is an artist. 

I had never been to the Colony restaurant be¬ 
fore. The soft gray tones, the uncrowded space, 
and the cool quiet, the whole atmosphere soothes 
and rests and invites intimacy, confidences. We sat 
in an alcove and talked softly with long exquisite 
pauses. It is the mood of the place. Gordon 
stroked my hand and played gently with my fin¬ 
gers as his low voice warmly enveloped me. And 
his words were impersonal. He spoke of recent 
books, of his painting, of the sea and of the 
colors of Italy, of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen¬ 
turies, which he worshipped, of the theatres and 
critics, of French cooking. And his words were 
impersonal. He was thoughtful and sweetly for¬ 
mal. Through the evening his manner never 
changed. Gordon is an artist. Peace hovered 
over me and penetrated through me, soul satisfy- 

[42] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

ing peace. Not even the regret that it was pass¬ 
ing touched me. Once only during dinner 
after a silence Gordon bent over and looked 
closely into my face with his soft dancing eyes. 
You are an adorable person, Chlo, he almost 
whispered slowly. You are understanding and 
fine right through. 

He stopped. We were silent awhile. And that 
was all. Gordon is an artist. How I loved him 
at that minute. I wanted him so that I ached 
with it. A thousand things rushed to my lips, 
trembled there and dissolved. And I was happy. 
What an exquisite torment of feelings. It was as 
if I stood on the brink of a precipice and looked 
down and down through space into beautiful 
scenery below and with vague uneasiness felt 
the thrill of an almost invisible desire to let my¬ 
self float out into this wonderful space. I was 
happy. Gordon was beautiful in the shadowy al¬ 
cove with his quiet warm voice and his long slen¬ 
der hands. I was happy. Marry me. The low 
sweet strain of my imagination. So low and so 
sweet. Marry me. Was this passing through 
Gordon’s mind also? Sooner or later, my imag¬ 
ination repeated, he will ask me to marry him. 
He has thought of last night. I was quiet and 
happy. 

Romeo and Juliet. Oh. Oh. Could anything 

[ 43 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

ever have been lovelier? Only a woman on a 
balcony making long speeches to a man in the 
shadows below. But what a grip it has. Gordon 
took my hand and held it. After that act I 
raved. I talked rapidly hardly knowing what I 
said. Some of the pent up flood boiling in me 
since the evening before broke through and 
gushed out. Gordon never said a word. He 
looked at me with great warm eyes, half-smiling. 
Gazed steadily. What a fool I am. Suddenly I 
was embarrassed. I flushed, I am sure. I felt 
self-conscious under his warm gaze and broke off 
and looked straight ahead. Gordon fingered 
through his program. That’s all my mind is 
good for. Recalling little meaningless things 
that I may worry about them afterwards. Forget¬ 
ting big things, remembering petty ones. Rot! 
Why am I like that? Will I never grow up? 

We went to the Rendez-vous afterwards. 
Seated near the entrance high against the wall 
I silently gazed through the smoke of the low 
ceiled room at the noisy vacant crowd. A bedlam 
without meaning. Dancing that was not dancing 
at all, only the slow thick movement of a tired, 
drugged mob. Dancing so crowded and slow and 
graceless that it was not even sensual. Merely 
ugly. And every one — seated or dancing — 
looked weary and bored or tipsy. Beautiful dresses. 

[44] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Weary or drunken with weariness. Why do they 
go there? Stay there? When they are so tired 
and bored. What a change from a moonlit bal¬ 
cony to this blatant, ugly, jazzy room with its 
nightmare of white faces. I felt superior to this 
crowd of — of sheep. I’ve never been back. 
Would I feel ordinarily the superior disgust I 
experienced that night, I wonder, or was it the 
mood with which the Colony had haloed me, 
which a balcony scene had intensified? Anyway 
I felt superior. Gordon — sensitive Gordon — 
must have shared my feeling. He, too, was quiet 
and silently listened and gazed. Was he thinking, 
I said to myself, as I was? Of holding me in his 
arms? Of kissing me? Of asking me to be his 
wife? 

Even in the taxi on the way home we hardly 
spoke. Gordon placed his arm around my shoul¬ 
der and snuggled me close to him and held my 
hand in his. I was happy. So little it takes. I 
was happy. I love you, I repeated to myself, I 
love you, and we will marry; you will ask me 
to marry you and we will be happy; I love you. 
Life seemed so clear and simple that evening. 
Sometimes it seems that way and for days after¬ 
wards I try to recall it, bring it back. But the 
clearness is banished. I wonder over it, but it 
never returns until ready. What was it Profes- 

[45] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

sor Parkinson told us once about Nietzsche ? That 
no one could see simply and clearly for long 
without going mad. Yes, that was it. I shall 
never go mad. I should be the sanest person in 
the world. Mixed. Mixed with wants and fears. 
Love. I was happy and saw clearly that evening. 

Gordon followed me inside the door to say 
good night. He took my hand and we stood 
facing each other. He raised my hand to his lips 
and held it there an instant. 

— Please kiss me good night, Chlo. — 

I leaned against the wall. He raised his hand 
gently and tilted my chin and kissed me. I 
wanted him to say, marry me, I wanted him to 
say, marry me. I was wishing, trying to will 
him to say it. I waited, weak with waiting. And 
he said nothing. He looked at me for a long 
time. Seconds? Minutes? It seemed ages and I 
was weak with wishing and waiting before he 
stepped forward and tried to force his arms 
around me. 

— No, Gordon.— 

Waiting. Wishing. Willing. Now he will say 
it. I want him. I want him. I can’t let him take 
me in his arms yet. He must say it. He must. 
I want him. 

— I’m sorry, Chlo dear. Forgive me. You are 
adorable. You’ve given me a wonderful evening 

[46] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

— good night dear — you know — I think I love 
you.— 

He raised my hands again to his lips and was 
gone. Oh Gordon, Gordon, you are a finished, 
beautiful artist in the world of making love. 

I was happy. I was sorry and glad by turns 
that I hadn’t let him take me in his arms. Sorry 
for fear he might feel that I was a smug little 
puritan. Glad because it might enhance my value. 
I was happy. Sooner or later he would ask me to 
marry him, I said to myself. I was sure and I 
was happy. I loved him. Or did I love him even 
then? Was it not merely my longing to be close 
to some one pitched on a high key ? I was happy. 
Sooner or later he would ask me to marry him. 


[47] 


3 


Chlo lay comfortably relaxed on her right 
side. Forgotten were her surroundings, the 
dreary heat and the late hour; forgotten was 
the sleeper and the sounds of his slow, heavy 
breathing from the other bed. Her wide- 
open eyes stared unseeingly into the dark¬ 
ness that enveloped the room. She lay with¬ 
out movement. 

Day after day Gordon phoned. Evening after 
evening we spent together. Almost a month of 
sweetly melancholy days and quietly happy eve¬ 
nings. Cold and windy Sundays at deserted Long 
Beach or Asbury Park or Port Washington; or 

[48] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Sunday afternoons rambling through lower New 
York, now stricken with prolonged silence by 
the dumb upstretching of these grim, graceless 
structures, their wretched ugliness distorted into 
beauty by their very mass and the emptiness 
surrounding them. How I hate them with their 
crowds. Then I am lost under their shadows. 
They make tiny, grubbing, hustling ants of us. 
But with Gordon and the silence they are beau¬ 
tiful. Big and ungainly and beautiful. Standing 
on the customhouse steps Gordon swept out his 
arm before him. 

— It is the silence, the peace and quiet, he ex¬ 
claimed, that turns it into art, Chlo. We call 
ourselves civilized. You can’t have civilization 
with noise. The two are directly opposed to each 
other. We are going about it all wrong. Here 
we are crying for democracy and all the word 
seems to have meant so far is the equal right of 
men to see who can shout loudest and longest. 
Civilization means harmony. It means quiet and 
leisure to think in and work in. Civilization con¬ 
notes an appreciation of art and beauty — of life 
itself. You can’t get the real beauty out of life 
with noise drowning everything about you. You 
can’t look at a painting or listen to music or even 
think straight and simply with all the crashing 
and banging we live under. Chlo, I tell you we 

[49] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

will never begin to be civilized until we start 
out to conquer noise. It’s the hideous curse of 
our age. Running a tram is a far greater crime, 
old darling, than mere straightforward murder. 
And how we love to fool ourselves with this mad 
rush and bustle with which we perform our 
petty little duties from day to day. Hurry, hurry, 
skip through the traffic, don’t wait for the cop’s 
whistle, a minute may be lost. And what’s the 
hurry for? Follow one of them. Watch him push 
people out of his way, only to stop at last to chat 
with some other ass for an hour about his radio 
or motor car. 

— But that’s a lot of bunk I’ve made you listen 
to, isn’t it, Chlo, dear? Things are as they are 
and all we can do is to sidestep gracefully what we 
hate, what? It’s wonderful right now anyway. 
And you are here and I take your hand so and 
kiss it so and it’s all very wonderful. Therefore 
and ergo, darling child, the rest can jolly well 
go hang. You are truly, truly adorable, dear. — 

He gazed down at me softly with his brown 
eyes half closed and twinkling. He still held my 
hand in his. I have never in all my life wanted 
anything as much as I longed for him at that 
minute. My heart pounded and I could hardly 
breathe. If he had taken me in his arms then and 
there I would have made no resistance. I wanted 

[50] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

his lips pressed against mine. I wanted him all 
close, close to me, a part of me. What was it? 
All the sadness — all the — the melancholy of 
the world swept through me. 

A Single Sob of Pleasure, 

A Single Pulse of Pain 

Pain. Pain that was exquisite torture. Welling 
up in me. Indefinable. A single sob of pleasure. 
Without meaning. Without thought. The world 
was a floating cloud and Gordon and I stood alone 
hand in hand. A thousand captured emotions 
fought for release, struggled to burst their bonds. 
A thousand thoughts raged for speech and yet I 
had no thought. We stood alone without moving. 
Gordon patted my hand, his fingers caressing 
mine; something broke within me. I turned 
aside my head, for tears, I knew, were stealing 
into my eyes. Gordon saw but did not speak. He 
started to, hesitated, stopped. Was he on the 
verge of asking me? I have wondered so often. 
I wonder now. I suddenly felt tired and chilly. 
I said, let’s go. We drove to the Brevoort for tea. 
I remember that. For a long time we neither 
spoke. I kept thinking, soon he will ask me. He 
must ask me. He knows that I will not give my¬ 
self up without marriage. Or does he know ? He 
has known many women, made many conquests. 

[5i] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Why don’t I ask him to marry me ? Afraid; that 
was the trouble, the haunting uneasiness that 
stole through my body at the thought. And he 
had me guessing, too. He had never tried to 
force me since that first evening. What was he 
thinking? I couldn’t tell. Perhaps he was drift¬ 
ing towards the idea gradually. I would wait. A 
little while longer, only a little while. I could 
not stand the tension much longer, I felt. What 
a fool I am! 

So often the memory of that day returns, a 
• high-light my thoughts of Gordon can never 
avoid. Yet such a futile memory. For it is loaded 
with regrets of what I might have done and might 
have said when every fibre of my being cried 
out for him, for the close physical touch of his 
whole being. The return of that desire rushing 
over me makes me shiver and squirm now. 
There we were flesh speaking to flesh, clearly and 
with the perfect understanding of all nature. Yet 
all the time our mouths were pouring forth 
words that were millions of miles removed from 
what was in us. Did we both not know the 
tricks we were so lamely and haltingly playing? 
Each waiting and watching the other. Why do 
we have to play with life this way? Who tells 
the truth? Who dares? I don’t. I know no one 
who does. Cordie makes a pretense but her 

[52] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

honest bluff heartiness doesn’t always ring natu¬ 
rally. Yes, you too, Cordie. You hide many 
things your dearest friends will never guess. And 
you, too, Willa darling. You say I’m too intro¬ 
spective and sensitive, but what do you fear and 
hide, angels? I know. Cordie and Willa are not 
happy girls. No one can eternally play with their 
minds and bodies and be happy. You get tired of 
thinking in circles and life becomes meaningless. 
And you can’t take up religion. If you’ve thrown 
it aside too often you’re ashamed after a while 
to pick it up again. 

And you get lonesome. Horribly, unspeak¬ 
ably lonesome and there’s nothing to tie to. And 
life’s hell when you’re lonesome in that way. 
No matter how many men and women you know. 
It just doesn’t pay to try to think. It makes you 
old and lonesome. And I’m so lonesome now. 
There I go again! Self pity. Have I no shame 
to myself? Is it all drawn from what others 
may think? I tell Cordie and Willa I’m like 
this and that and I feel thus and so. And I be¬ 
lieve it when I tell them. I tell them that life 
means to me independence in thought and action 
without human strings to tie me down. And 
when I’m alone I drop into self pity. But life 
stretches out so pitifully empty and monotonous 
ahead. Why should that be? I’m not old. And 

[53] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

yet — yet — I feel old. I feel as if there is noth¬ 
ing in the world can bring me any happiness. 
Old ? Twenty-nine is not old. Life may be hold¬ 
ing in wait a thousand joys for me. But I can’t 
convince myself. I still feel old and the future 
still seems empty and useless in spite of what I 
try to think. I’ve felt this way before and it 
didn’t last. Why can’t I put a stop to it then? 
Every time I feel it will last all my life. But I 
know it won’t. Even a cool morning to-morrow 
and my white sports suit may drive this all from 
my head as if it had never been there. Then why 
in heaven’s name can’t I stop it now ? I can. Any 
one can do anything if she will only keep at it. 
Let’s see now. I won’t think of anything. It’s 
worse than stupid to keep this up. I am going to 
sleep. . . . 

Day after day you phoned me at the office, 
didn’t you, Gordon? And evening after evening 
we spent together. During the day I was rest¬ 
less and irritable. In the evening I was expectant 
and uneasily happy. Waiting in the cold daylight, 
trying to foster nerve to ask Gordon to marry me. 
Dreaming in the evening at his side, expecting — 
expecting what would not come. Pitting my re¬ 
sistance against his. And my work suffered and 
I was unhappy. Cordie would say, you look and 
act like the very devil, Chlo. What the deuce 

[54] 




ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

do you keep this up for? Now don’t be an ass 
about this big-eyed painter friend of yours. He 
isn’t worth it, dear. 

— Don’t be silly, Cordie. I’m not and you know 
it. I’m just tired, perhaps. That’s all.— 

— Whistle that to the birds, darling child. Are 
you in love with this beautiful male? — 

— Who? Gordon? Certainly not. He’s sim¬ 
ply darned good company and takes me to a 
lot of nice funny places. And he really is en¬ 
tertaining. — 

— Yes? Well, it was foolish of me to ask. I 
know you’re in love with him. All right. All 
right. But please let old Cordie say this, sweet: 
you can’t keep this sort of thing up, or I’ll be wait¬ 
ing on you as nurse at your bedside. Look at it 
squarely. Either take this young fellow on as a 
lover or marry him. Of course you could stop 
seeing him altogether. But you won’t, dear, you 
won’t. So there you are.— 

— But Cordie, don’t be silly. You’re taking an 
awful lot for granted. I’m not in love with 
Gordon. — 

— All right, darling, all right. But think over 
what old Cordie had to say. I’m speaking with 
old Freud right back of me. Freud says — 

— Cordie, if you start Freud on me I’ll leave 
the house. — 


[ 55 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Dear old Cordie, I wish I had told her every¬ 
thing. I couldn’t tell her. She makes me feel 
such a babe in arms when she gives advice. She’s 
so matter-of-fact and casual about the most 
intimate things. She claims it’s because she’s 
healthy-minded. I think it’s because she’s so 
strong and has so much energy. And besides I 
don’t believe in taking emotions and throwing 
them on other people’s backs. I don’t want any 
thrown on mine and I’m not going to throw any 
on the back of any one else if I can help it. Some¬ 
times though I wish I could. But Cordie made me 
feel so little when she said, be his lover or marry 
him. If she only knew how I wanted to be his 
lover. If she only knew how I suffered because 
I couldn’t bring myself to it. To live with him 
in dreams — to make love to him in my imagina¬ 
tion — to let my conscience or whatever fool thing 
it is hold me back in real life. What — what — 
what damned irony! 

Then J. P., so solicitous and sympathetic. I 
had been working too hard, he said, I needed re¬ 
laxation. Every one should get plenty of rest and 
exercise and relaxation. His sympathy had the 
familiar ring of How To Ta\e Life On High or 
Why l Am What 1 Am To-day — the daily news¬ 
paper capsules of cheer to put pep into American 
citizens. 


[56] 


ONE — TWO —THREE — FOUR 

— Now, Miss Harding, this won’t do at all. 
Not at all. Frankly, I’m afraid that Delise has 
knocked you out for a bit. It’s no easy thing to 
pull a lot of good fresh selling copy on face 
creams these days. You need a change — a good 
rest for a while. And, by George, you deserve 
one. You’ve done a — er — corking job, Miss 
Harding, a corking job. But we all need a change 
every now and then. Relaxation. That’s the way 
I keep my grip on things. Work hard but play 
hard. You’re a woman, Miss Harding, and 
frankly can’t stand the gaff like we — er — hard- 
boiled men. Now you just knock off for a week 
and go away. Eh? You’ll come back feeling 
great. — 

— It’s awfully kind of you, Mr. Mitchell, and I 
appreciate your thoughtfulness. But I truly don’t 
need a rest now. I’m perfectly all right. If you 
don’t mind I’d rather stick and see this campaign 
through the proofs.— 

— Pride of workmanship, eh? Well, it’s a 
great thing, Miss Harding. That’s the spirit that 
carried us through this depression. I — er — I 
wish you would let me take you out to dinner 
and a show some night this week. You must have 
been sticking in close lately. You’ve turned down 
all my invites now for weeks. You know — 
er —frankly, Miss Harding, I prefer your com- 

[57] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

pany to that of any woman I know. How about 
it now ? — 

I turned him down as I had a dozen times since 
Gordon bumped into me on the avenue. Lately 
J. P. had become irritating to me. His manner¬ 
isms. His hale-fellow sparkling eye. His er — er 
and his frankness. His aroma of success. I com¬ 
pared him with Gordon. I pictured him kissing 
me and holding me in his arms. I shuddered. 
Against my will I compared his blunt, stubby 
hands with the long, slender, graceful hands of 
Gordon. The thoughts I let myself live with 
from day to day! Would the idea of dining at 
the Colony ever have entered the head of J. P. 
of his own accord? No. Plenty of lights, a full- 
sized orchestra and a table in full view of all 
the room. Restaurants with wide reputations 
where the chances were greatest of being seen 
and recognized. Shows that would not mar the 
serenity bestowed by a comfortable dinner. 

— These sex problem plays and these out-of- 
the-way abnormalities that two-by-four play- 
writers try to force down our throats — what 
does it get you to see things like that? Those 
sort of upsets don’t enter the lives of decent peo¬ 
ple. The best we can do is to forget such things 
anyway. I go to the theatre for amusement. Give 
me a good clean musical show or some thriller. 

[ 58 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

That’s the stuff for me. That play Mourning Be¬ 
comes Electra and nightmares like that. Dys¬ 
peptics writing for dyspeptics. Those morbid plays 
only fill people with a lot of ideas they’re better 
off without.— 

How it irritates when I put down his ideas 
side by side with those of Gordon. Even now. 
Those of Gordon seemed so much — so much 
broader and more civilized. 

— A great play. Gordon said. It’s certainly 
loaded to make you think twice. I like a play 
that has some subtlety and depth to it and a 
play that tells you something. And the beauty of 
it’s pure classic structure and old Greek formality. 

Yet when I see the two opinions together now 
which is the saner? J. P. wanted plain amuse¬ 
ment. Gordon wanted amusement too but 
through the medium of intellectual subtleties. 
Oh, be frank about it. I enjoy the plays that J. P. 
defends but a shame goes with my enjoyment. 
I’m disturbed by the thought that I ought not to 
like them. They ought to be beneath me. Yet 
I like those too that Gordon likes. They give me 
more pleasure really than the others. They raise 
my self-respect. Vanity, I suppose. Snobbishness. 
I don’t care. I’m glad I can get more enjoyment 
out of intellectual problems. If there are ugly 
things to face in this world, why not face them 

[59] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

fairly and squarely. But }. P. said that seeing 
them on the stage or in books was going out of 
your way to uncover them. That angered me 
dreadfully. He’s so sure and practical. And he 
made it so hopeless to argue with him. Beside 
the exquisite subtlety of Gordon his ideas have 
always seemed almost uncouth in their blunt 
bareness. There were times when I hated him for 
it. I simply couldn’t go out with him. Whenever 
he entered my mind Gordon was there to meet 
him and overshadow him and magnify his — his 
blatancies. I could not see him then in other terms. 
Gordon filled me night and day. My whole 
being was saturated with him. Before, I had de¬ 
sired a man; now it was one man. Before, I had 
been able to fight off man in the individual; now 
I was almost helpless. Wanting. Wanting. Want¬ 
ing. Wanting. Would he never ask me to marry 
him? Would I never have the courage to ask 
him ? The torment of those questions. This quiet, 
gentle sweetness that he poured over me. It 
was almost unbearable. I could not penetrate it. 
I waited. Not for worlds would I ever let any 
man torture me that way again. 

Let’s see. How long did this go on? Two 
months. More. And then that evening in his 
studio, his lovely, low-lit ascetic cell. We had 
sat tensely through Alien Corn . I was aflame, 

[ 60 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

swept off my feet. Gordon? I don’t know. He 
must have been. It must have been the turmoil 
of his emotions that led him to lean over me 
after the second act with his breath warm against 
my ear and say, Chlo, please come up to the 
studio with me after the show. I’ve something 
awfully important to say. I nodded my head in 
consent and a gust of passion swept over me. I 
suppose it was passion. A hot streak shooting 
through me, leaving me limp for a moment and 
almost trembling. It was the same shock that 
passed through me that first evening when he 
took me in his arms. Is that passion? The de¬ 
scriptions I’ve read and heard of love and of 
passion are so unlike what I’ve experienced. You 
can’t describe such things. Words won’t fit them. 
I can realize; I can recall; I can go through it all 
again; but I can’t tell myself what it’s like. 

We drove to your studio, Gordon, and we were 
both buried in our own shut-off world. Would 
he ask me now? I wanted to escape my own 
questions. I looked steadily through the window. 

An electric sign. Eddie Cantor in his new-. 

Flash on, flash off. Would he ask me now? 
Would he be a funny actor if he weren’t a Jew? 
Jews. Would Jolson? Durante? If he didn’t 
ask me, would I ask him? Hush. A cop. A big 
tall, upstanding man. Can you really tell a hotel 

[61] 



ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

detective by his feet? If he doesn’t ask me I’ll 
ask him. I will. Brown stone fronts. Brown 
stone — two — five — all the same. They were 
standardized then as much as we are now. I 
will. I will. 

Oh, dear. How silly things are at a distance. 
To remember so clearly after this length of time. 
Or am I remembering? Or dreaming? Incidents 
stick with us. Their importance has nothing to 
do with it. But Cordie would say any incident 
must have been important if we recall it after¬ 
wards. Freud again! I was waiting for Gordon 
to ask me something. Oh, yes. Marry. 

Gordon steps ahead of me into the studio and 
lights his severe standing lamp, throwing the big, 
semi-bare room into a gloomy haze. That ascetic, 
sensual room. He tiptoes back and carefully 
closes the door. I stand waiting. By the door 
back against the wall. Waiting. My heart is 
pounding rapidly. He turns towards me. His 
face is pale and his eyes shine even in the gloom. 
I am frightened. I know before he reaches me — 
before his arms stretch out. Marry? No. Not 
yet. Not yet. I must not. I must not. Oh God, I 
must not. Hours have passed in less than a 
second. His arms are around me. Chlo! I am 
struggling. He hurts. I can’t breathe. His face 
is against mine. His lips pressing, devouring, 

[62] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

dragging across my face. I can’t breathe. I can’t 
breathe. Panic gives me strength and I fight with¬ 
out uttering a word. I wrench loose from him. 
Panting and staring at each other as if we were 
strangers. I am exhausted. Trembling from head 
to foot. I lean against the wall for support. My 
heart is pounding. Pounding. My head whirls. 
His kisses are still moist on my forehead, my lips, 
my neck. Words come in gasps. 

— What are you trying to do, Gordon? 

He drops on one knee, takes my hand, presses 
it tightly against his face. My ring digs a hollow 
in his cheek. 

— Forgive me, darling. I love you. I adore 
everything about you. I couldn’t help kissing 
you then. I had to, Chlo. You are burning me. 
You’re a fire that has been blazing in my breast 
since the afternoon we met on the avenue. Please, 
dear, don’t look like that. Come here and sit 
down. Please. I won’t do it again.— 

He leads me to his easy chair. Gently with 
his arm around my waist. Images fly before my 
eyes. Again he takes my hand between his two 
and on his knees he leans against the arm of the 
chair, his head near and the soft warm tones of 
his voice are almost a whisper. The appeal of 
his voice, of his nearness, smother me in their 
embrace. I want to take his head and hold it close 

[63] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

and hard against my breast. He speaks. And his 
words come slowly, with pauses, as if he is 
choosing each one from a platter piled high with 
many that are desirable. 

— Chlo dear, this can’t go on this way. We are 
not in swaddling clothes. We are not two inno¬ 
cent babes in the woods. And we can’t go on 
and on playing with our emotions as if they didn’t 
exist. You know I love you very dearly. And 
surely you must — you must reciprocate to some 
degree. You couldn’t go with me day after day 
this way for two whole months unless you had 
gathered together some few fragments of love 
for me. Love is a beautiful thing, darling. The 
only satisfyingly beautiful thing in the world. 
It’s much too big to spoil. So let’s not spoil it 
by playing with it this way. This flirting back 
and forth. That all belongs to children, Chlo. 
It’s no game for us to play. Love means so much 
more. And we are missing such a terrible lot. 
We have so many things in common. We like 
to see the same things, do the same things, go to 
the same places. Do conventions bother you, dear ? 
No one need ever know. Besides you’ve often 
said you don’t care what people think. Don’t 
you remember? Why, you told me that ten 
years ago even. You don’t want to marry. You’ve 
never wanted that. And you used to say that 

[64] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

you never would. What is it then, dear? Don’t 
you love me ? I’ll be so gentle with you and I do 
love you. You know that. Is it because I’ve 
loved other women? I want to be honest and 
square on that score. I’ve been in love before 
with but two women in all my life until now. 
I’ve had other women. True. It’s in the very 
roots of my nature. I can’t do without them. But 
I was never untrue to either of the two women 
I really loved. And they are dead loves now; 
they have left my life completely. But believe 
me, Chlo, never was my love for them of the na¬ 
ture of the love I lay at your feet. They were mad 
passions. Physical fires only. And I worship 
you, Chlo. There’s something big and fine about 
you that almost scares me sometimes. I worship 
you and adore everything about you. Chlo, dar¬ 
ling, don’t let’s pass this by. We can’t keep on 
this way. The beauty, the most exquisite beauty 
life can offer — and I shall love you so gently. 
Darling. Darling. I can’t go on without you.— 
He leaned over and buried his head against my 
shoulder. I could not help it. Instinctively my 
other hand reached over and caressed his hair. 
All the fire had gone from me, leaving me all still 
inside and warm as if a glowing ember radiated 
a gentle heat around my heart and through my 
body. For a moment I was years older than 

[65] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Gordon. And a pity that was deeper than love 
stretched out to him through my hand as it ca¬ 
ressed his hair. A pity that was more exquisite 
in its tone than love alone could be. A pity that 
was love and more than love. Pity that was all- 
embracing peace reaching into every nook and 
corner of me. The joy of it. Rare and perfect. 
My head was clear as morning air and mentally 
I was holding him in my arms with his head 
tucked against my breast. For an instant I have 
known a mother’s love for her child. 

— I do love you, Gordon. I love you very, very 
dearly. More than I can put into words. I love 
you so deeply, dear. I think I can realize some¬ 
thing of what you have been going through. 
Something of the same thing has been coursing 
through me, too, Gordon. I’ll be frank, Gordon, 
as I’ve never been frank with any man. I want 
you to know the truth as far as it is in me to see 
it. It’s hard to say what I want to say. I’m grop¬ 
ing for words that will make you understand. I 
can’t give myself to you, Gordon — unless — un¬ 
less — you marry me. I can’t — 

— Marry! But, Chlo, you don’t mean that — 
why I thought you — 

I interrupted. He was on his feet now staring 
at me with wide-open eyes. He looked so funny 
standing there gaping at me that I could not 

[ 66 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

resist smiling. A man off his guard is never 
but a small boy. I could afford to smile now. 
Waiting tears my heart and soul to pieces. And 
most of my life I sit waiting. Sometimes I see 
time leering at me like a dirty old man. One 
whom I would like to reach out and spit on and 
stamp on. But anticipation gone and when the 
awaited to-morrow is now, there is a let-down. 
Peace steals in and my mind is calm. The per¬ 
spective is gone and with it goes something else. 
What? How many I have loved at a distance, 
painted pictures around them and myself, imag¬ 
ined them with me in their arms. And then when 
my dream bumped into the reality. The disgust 
that intruded against my will and made me fight 
off their kisses and embraces. The let-down of 
reality. The fading of the dream. The calmness 
and coolness that invades. What is it? What? 
But the image I hold of Gordon now was not 
that. How did I feel? Peaceful and calm. Yes, 
all of that. But no disgust. Never any disgust 
with Gordon so far. He is different. He is so — 
so — clean and smooth and his eyes and mouth 
and hands are so nice. I still wanted him as much 
as ever. I must have or I wouldn’t have answered 
as I did. Then how in the world did I feel? A 
big fairness. That was it. I felt I was being bigger 
than myself and was stirred to calmness by my 

[67] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

own pride in the fact. Meeting a man on his 
own ground. What a silly fool I am. But I don’t 
always fool myself. I know. Of course I still 
wanted him — but the grand gesture of staking 
all and telling all. 

\ am & messy idiot. No wonder I could afford 
to smile in such a superior way. I felt so old and 
wise. Good Lord! 

— Wait, Gordon. Listen to what I have to say. 
I’m proposing to you, dear. I am asking you 
in the simplest and straightest way I can to marry 
me. Please, please, dear, don’t interrupt me yet. 
I know it’s shameful and absurd. But I want 
you to hear me out. 

— I’m asking you to marry me, Gordon, be¬ 
cause I do love you so much and I don’t want to 
give you up if I can help it. But I can’t give 
myself to you as your mistress. Why? Don’t 
ask me, Gordon. I’ve tried to answer that ques¬ 
tion for the last two months. Did you think for 
a second I didn’t know what you wanted from 
the beginning? Wait, please, dear. I want to 
tell you why if I can find any words to do it 
with. I know what you are thinking. I don’t 
blame you one bit for thinking I’m — well — 
you know what I mean. I’ve fought with myself 
night and day since we came together two months 
ago. I want to give myself to you. I’d give my 

[ 68 ] 


ONE —TWO —THREE — FOUR 

right hand if I could. My mind tells me that 
marriage is all silly rot. It’s —it’s just a word, 
just a word out of the dictionary. And we’ve 
tacked all sorts of meanings and scares to it. 
But — but — Gordon, can’t you see? Can’t you 
see? Don’t you understand what I’m driving at? 
I cant be your mistress. I can’t. There’s some¬ 
thing won’t let me. I — myself — me, Gordon — 
won’t do what I tell myself to do. Crazy? Of 
course it’s crazy, dear. It has no meaning. It’s 
a dream. A mad dream. But I can’t escape, Gor¬ 
don. I’ve dropped all pride, dear. I’m stripping 
myself bare before you. I want you. Marriage 
means nothing to me. Then why? What is it? 
Heredity? Environment? Fear? I don’t know. 
All three. My mother. My grandmother. I’d 
almost give my soul to — to — to throw myself 
into your — arms. The future seems impossible 
without you. I’ve thought of that and suffered 
that thought a thousand times over you. And 
it’s a battle I’ve always lost. For three years, 
Gordon, after I came to New York I deliberately 
shut men out of my life. They were in the way 
of my ambitions. I shut them out and I wanted 
them terribly more and more all the time. I’ve 
never lived with a man. Both the girls I live 
with now have lovers. Otherwise I act as they 
do. I think very much as they do. But I cant 

[69] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

give myself just off-handedly to a man. When I 
wanted to give myself away and tried to — I — I 

— simply couldn’t. I’m telling you this because 

— because. Why, I don’t know really why, dear. 
I want you. I want you with every nerve that’s 
in me. But Gordon — Gordon — I want you to 
marry me. You must marry me. I can’t do with¬ 
out you. I can’t. Can’t you see, dear . . . can’t 
you understand. . . . 


[70] 


4 


Chlo’s body was half raised from the bed as 
she rested on her right elbow. Her right 
hand was tightly clenched and her left arm 
was stretched straight down her side with 
hand clutching the thin nightgown into a 
\not against her thigh. She craned her nec\ 
forward with such intensity that it trembled 
slightly and her blan\ gaze remained un- 
win\ingly fixed on a distant spot that did 
not exist. From the next bed came a slight 
groan and the dead silence was disturbed by 
the muffled noise of a body changing its posi¬ 
tion. Chlo did not hear. 

[ 7 1 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

I hesitated for breath . . . and words . . . and 
sudden sick revulsion. Was that my voice? That 
piercing high-pitched wail? My own words still 
echoed through the dull glow of the big room: 
they pounded against my ears; they seemed de¬ 
tached from me, to belong to some third person, 
some one unknown to me. I glanced down 
startled to see my arms outstretched . . . my 
body bent forward out of the chair . . . tense 
. . . shame ... I leaned back . . . dropped my 
arms in my lap. My hands jerked when I clasped 
them and I held them together with difficulty. 
Wisdom? Where now was my role of smiling 
calm? Of the wise benevolent mother? Am I 
one girl or two or three? How many people 
am I? One minute I have a superior smile for a 
weakness in a friend; weeping the next minute 
over that same weakness in myself. Mother’s 
old habit of looking at one out of the corners of 
her eyes without turning her head when answer¬ 
ing, how irritated and furious that used to make 
me. Now Cordie and Willa tease me about glanc¬ 
ing from the corners of my eyes. And it’s like 
stamping me with a red hot iron, it makes me 
writhe. The things I hate in others are always 
cropping out in me. How I loathe heroics; and 
yet there I was almost crying and screaming at 
Gordon, imploring him to marry me. As I talked 

[72] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

I had lost all bearings. Terror had seized me. 
At the end I was not talking. Terror was talk¬ 
ing through me. Horrible, nauseating, panic- 
stricken terror. It came from nowhere. It struck 
me in the face, tore open my mouth and ripped 
words out of me. Words I had not dreamed of 
saying aloud; words that even now seem never 
to have been mine. Yet there they were. Plead¬ 
ing and imploring with a man to marry me! 
Naming the price of my body when the strong¬ 
est desire of my life was to yield it to him. More 
than naming the price, demanding it, screaming 
for it like a — a drunken woman. And why? 
Because — because — because some stone wall 
stopped me. Because, great God, I can’t do what I 
want most to do in this world. I never was in 
command. I never have been and never will be. 

Gordon pacing up and down. Never stopping, 
never raising his eyes from the floor. Pacing up 
and down. It was ages before he spoke. I grad¬ 
ually settled into dull stupor. My thoughts no 
longer held together. I thought of a thousand 
things. I thought how funny my hands wouldn’t 
keep still, of the stern knot of hair mother used 
to wind about the back of her head, of the slow 
rhythm of Gordon’s footsteps, of a headline that 
made me want to laugh, of the peculiar shadow 
the easel threw down the room and up the wall, of 

[73] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Gordon’s hands, of myself waiting for my destiny 

— Napoleon and destiny and Gordon pacing up 
and down getting ready to declare our destiny. 
Of a thousand stupid disconnected things. I can 
imagine what a moving picture must be when 
run backwards. Up and down. Up and down 
with his hands in his trouser pockets. He stops 
beside the table and lights a cigarette. Up and 
down. Why doesn’t he speak? 

Softly and evenly, almost caressingly: I’m so 
dreadfully, dreadfully sorry, Chlo; I mean for 
what I’ve done, dear. I’m — I don’t know how 
to say it — all inside I’m just down on my knees 
kissing the hem of your skirt. It must have 
cost you an awful lot to come out frankly at 
me like that. It was big. It was probably big¬ 
ger than I can even realize. I can see it — vaguely 

— but I can’t realize it fully because — well — 
well because I’m not built to fully understand 
your point of view, I suppose. 

— I’ve been all sorts of a fool, Chlo. A damned 
big fool. I only hope you can forgive the way 
I’ve been acting. But I wasn’t flirting dear. Don’t 
think that for a second. I’ve loved you and 
admired you all along. I love you right now 
more than I thought I could love any woman. 
Please believe that. Won’t you ? I love you, Chlo 

— so much that it hurts. When I asked you to 

[74] 


4 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

be my mis— my — to be mine I was asking with 
all the love and respect any proposal of marriage 
could contain. Probably with a great deal more 
honesty than most marriage proposals contain. 
It’s just a point of view, I think. That’s all. 

— You see, Chlo, my philosophy of life has 
worked itself out so far along one straight line. 
I don’t believe in marriage. For myself I mean. 
I don’t want children. And I can’t for the life 
of me see any other good reason for marriage. 
That sounds cold-blooded, doesn’t it? I don’t 
mean it that way. I don’t feel that I’m cold¬ 
blooded anyway. But there are some people made 
for marriage; there are others who aren’t. The 
idea of marrying a woman and then settling down 
in an apartment or home — raising children — 
falling into a little group of other married couples 

— all doing the same thing in the same way — all 
traveling around in a little circle — losing all 
edge to their thoughts — forgetting how to think 

— why it gives me the cold shivers even to think 
of it. 

— For marriage becomes a habit, Chlo. There’s 
no escape from that that I can see. They all go 
the same way. It’s the natural thing — the first 
instinct of all — for a man and woman to — to 
mate. But Chlo, I simply cannot believe that it’s 
the natural thing for the same man and woman 

[75] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

to hold their love for each other through years 
of close intimacy. To me it is taking every bit 
of the meaning out of life. It’s throwing away 
the only real freedom any one possesses. 

— Am I rotten selfish in saying all this? Per¬ 
haps I am. I believe in selfishness. I’ve never yet 
seen anything done or said by any human being 
that wasn’t selfish. I’m not trying to be cynical, 
dear. I think that people should be selfish. It’s 
the only way anything ever gets done. Every 
one is searching for happiness in some form or 
other, whether you know it or not. I’m selfish 
about you. Because I love you. Your face, your 
figure, your gestures, the tiny curve of your lips 
where they meet at the center, the line of your 
ankle, the unexpectedly sudden way you break 
into a smile, the way you glance sidewise from 
your eyes. They all give me the most exquisite 
pleasure. Just as the way you talk. Everything 
about you keeps me in a continual state of long¬ 
ing for you, to be close to you, to have you for 
my own. For I see happiness there. Everything 
seems useless and pointless without you. But isn’t 
that selfish? It’s all because it gives me happi¬ 
ness. I’m no worse than any one else about it. 
I see it and admit it. That’s the only difference. 
I can see a picture of us together getting out of 
life the greatest joy it can give. I can see the joy 

[76] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

to me of showering love and tenderness on you 
in a thousand ways. And that is the greatest 
beauty in all life, dear, the unrestrained love of 
a man and a woman. 

— But such beauty can’t go on forever. It is 
not made to last forever. It’s too lovely and ex¬ 
quisite. But it’s worth more than all the monoto¬ 
nous lasting things of the world combined. You 
do understand, don’t you, Chlo? I want you this 
second as much as any man ever wanted a woman 
in this world. I want to take you in my arms 
and cover you with kisses. God, if you really 
knew how much I do love you and want you. 
And I can love you as you should be loved. There 
are not many men in this country who know any¬ 
thing about loving a woman or who think of 
her side of it — of what will give her most joy or 
what irritates or hurts. They see their own side 
and that’s enough for them. I know. I’ve talked 
to enough men and women to know how damned 
beastly and stupid most men are with women. 
Some men wonder a bit about the woman’s side 
but most of those are afraid or ashamed to ask. 
Very few men know how to make love; if they’re 
satisfied themselves, that’s the end of it. Some 
women marry and never find out the difference; 
they finally get a divorce. Then they say men 
think life is just made that way. Others are 

[ 77 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

more sensitive. They become so overwrought 
they finally get a divorce. Then they say men 
are brutes and take a dislike to the whole species. 
I know. I’ve heard them. 

— And I know this too, Chlo, that the way I 
love you or the way you love me can’t last indefi¬ 
nitely . It’s bound to drift into something else as 
times goes on. Not necessarily hate; I don’t mean 
that. But it would grow eventually into a monot¬ 
ony that we would both always regret. I’m an 
artist. It’s my whole life and means everything 
to me in the long run. Right now you mean 
more to me than art or painting or anything else. 
I’m glad of it. I want you to keep on meaning 
that to me. But I believe marriage would spoil 
all the beauty of it. It would be a millstone 
around the neck of my love; it would make my 
painting a secondary affair, a means to a living, 
a way to rent and respectability only. Respecta¬ 
bility! What a word! 

— Chlo, dear, I’m putting up all the argu¬ 
ments I know to make you take me without 
marriage. But I don’t want to persuade you into 
anything you’ll be unhappy over the rest of your 
life. I want you to see my viewpoint clearly 
and make up your mind from that. But I would 
love you so beautifully, Chlo. My whole aim is 
to make you happy, to give you all the beauty I 

[78] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

know love can give. Let’s don’t think of throw¬ 
ing it away for marriage. 

— I can’t give up my freedom. It means too 
much. Do you remember what you said to me 
that time years ago, Chlo, about living your own 
life? That’s exactly the way I feel and believe 
now. We’re here just once, and to complicate 
this short life with the details of day-to-day living, 
to clutter it up with a lot of outside responsibilities, 
why, it’s a crime against life itself. I’ve got to have 
so much time to myself — to think in. I want to 
ramble around when the mood strikes me — to 
see other kinds of people — to do other things — 
to live my life at times in other ways. I can’t give 
that up. I simply cannot, Chlo. I must travel 
alone, to take what I get — good or bad — on my 
own. Life has got to have some meaning to me; 
and I’ve got to walk alone to dig it out. This shar¬ 
ing of one’s life with another all the time — this 
shifting of responsibilities — I can’t see it. And as 
bad as it sounds, I repeat that I can’t under any 
conditions step out of the road I’m following. If 
I want to pick up to-morrow and go to France or 
India I can do it. It’s my choice. It’s not in me to 
sit back and be a husband. I’d make the rottenest 
husband in the world. You know that. And 
children? You don’t want children now, Chlo, 
but sooner or later — there’s never been a married 

[79] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

woman yet who sooner or later didn’t cry for 
children. Hereafter means nothing to me; it’s a 
dream for the people who can’t get what they 
want out of this life. And I’ve no desire, not one 
ounce of desire, to have my name perpetuated 
through any offspring of mine. If I can’t get 
what I want now — all right, I lose it and that’s 
the end. 

— I’m telling you all this, Chlo, because I do 
love you so much. I mean every word of it; it’s 
straight from my heart; and I believe it’s a bet¬ 
ter and truer love than most men have to offer. 
Because beauty is the only thing that has any real 
meaning to me; it’s the only thing worth while 
in all we see and do. And it’s the beauty of life 
I want to share with you. The rest — well, what 
does the rest count for after all? 

He was on his knees now beside my chair 
again. His arms were stretched across my lap, 
his hands clasping mine in his. And he was 
speaking brokenly and in a trembly voice that 
was tense. But what was he saying? I only 
caught snatches. Memories. I was overwhelmed 
with memories. His plea held long ago familiar 
arguments. They weighed down on me. Argu¬ 
ments that had come back to me over and over 
again and insisted on being reargued until I was 
sick of the sight of them. What had Gordon 

[ 80 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

said? 1 don't believe in marriage. For myself 
I mean. 1 don't want children . . . settling down 
in an apartment or home . . . raising children 
... all doing the same thing . . . forgetting how 
to thin\. ... To me it's taking the meaning out 
of life . . . it would ma\e my painting a sec - 
ondary affair. ... I can't give up my freedom. 
It means too much ... to see other \inds of 
people ... to do other things . . . I've got to 
wal\ alone to dig it out . . . every few words he 
struck me a blow in the face. Did he know? 
Was he saying these things deliberately? Why 
did he do it? Was it intentional? On his knees 
before me I vaguely knew he was making love to 
me but I no longer heard. Oh, God, oh, God! 

How it hurt. Oh! Oh! God, dear God, how 
it hurts. Even now it hurts. Years before I had 
believed those arguments. He believed them now. 
That was the only difference: He believed them 
now more truly and earnestly than ever I did. 
All his sophisticated experience was behind them. 
He believed every word he was saying. Oh! 


[ 81 ] 


Chlo rolled the weight of her body from her 
right arm and san\ bac\ so suddenly that 
the quic\ jar drew forth a squea\ from the 
lightly built bed frame. Rot, she whispered, 
pressing her teeth tightly together. She 
turned on one side, then the other. Finally, 
she half rolled, half threw, herself flat on her 
stomach, at an angle across the bed. Her 
face was buried in the pillow and she raised 
her arms above her head until they were, 
from elbow down, hanging loosely over the 
side. She turned her face the better to 
breathe, and sighed. 

[82] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

I won’t think of such things. I won’t. Now 
is the time for all good men — mad dogs and 
Englishmen. I wish it were morning. I’m jumpy. 
I wish — I don’t wish anything. Sleep now. Go 
to sleep. One — two — three — four — ten years 
of freedom. After all you can’t be free from 
yourself whatever happens. I can’t I know. But 
that’s the only freedom most people ever really 
want, whatever the freedom they scream and 
cry for. Authors write to get rid of thoughts 
that worry them. For what other reason should 
Swift or Voltaire or Schopenhauer or — or Ibsen 
have turned out such books? They were only 
trying to find a way to be rid of themselves. 
They were running away from themselves just 
as much as J. P. when he buys a radio. What 
did I say to Gordon that time? I want freedom 
in which to learn and grow and become some¬ 
thing; I want to get away from home and this 
stupid drab life. Oh, dear! And Gordon was so 
young and so shocked. I felt so old, so sure, the 
age and sureness that only a very young mind 
can feel. Marry ? The word filled me with scorn 
and bitterness. What chance had a married 
woman? Marriage and a home and three meals 
a day, raising children, watching them grow up, 
then their marriage, then their children. Round 
and round and round. What a horrible tread mill 

[83] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

we have made of civilized existence. Did mother 
in all her life do a single solitary thing that was 
not approved by a thousand years old convention ? 
My mother said, . . . My mother did. . . . When 
1 was your age. . . . 1 must spea\ with your 
father first dear. But was she worse than other 
mothers? Was she a worse mother than Mrs. Sim¬ 
mons or Aunt Georgia or Mrs. Larkness? They 
were all like that. If any one were to have told 
mother she was not a perfect mother she would 
have been shocked — horribly shocked; and she 
could never have believed it. I don’t blame her. 
But I can never forgive her the lies, the hundreds 
of silent lies that hid so many truths from 
me. They left unanswered questions reeling 
through my brain and torturing it for years. Yet 
how much of the fault was mine ? I was ashamed 
and afraid to ask some one else, I was ashamed of 
my own thoughts and dreams. I was fool enough 
to believe that such ideas only entered the heads 
of vile and unmentionable people. I can’t for¬ 
give that. Never. I don’t believe I’ll ever be able 
to reconcile what I know and think with what I 
feel. 

Everything was evil. When I was too young 
to know what evil was. Even when Gordon and 
I sailed cakes of soap in the bathtub. Her indig¬ 
nant head poked through the bathroom door. 

[84] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Naked! The scorn, the horror, the anger she 
piled up in that word. —Playing naked with a 
boy! Gordon take your clothes into the next room 
and dress. I’ll speak to your mother, young man. 
Chloretta — don’t stand there in that idiotic way. 
Put on your dress and go straight to your room. 
I’ll see to you in one minute. My child playing 
naked with a boy! — And I was five years old. 
How odd it is. Even now when I say, naked, to 
myself, I hesitate. To think that after more than 
twenty years I still squirm at the word naked. 
Naked. That afternoon will never, never fade. 
Whipped and packed to bed without supper. No 
explanation; not one spark of sympathy. It was 
cold-blooded. That’s exactly what it was: thought¬ 
less and cold-blooded. I know, because I know 
what mother’s feelings must have been; it was 
impersonal, a shocked feeling that was not her 
own but the public property that was shared 
with thousands of other mothers who had in¬ 
herited it from their mothers without knowing 
how or why. Without questoning. She gave no 
explanation to me. She gave no reason why I 
should not play in the tub — naked — with Gor¬ 
don. Only shocked stern words, a whipping, and 
bed without supper. And I lay in bed troubled. 
A question of a difference. Boys were boys; and 
girls were girls. I knew that before. But I had 

[85] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

never questioned it before. Of course not. I knew 
there was a difference, but it meant nothing to 
me. I could see Gordon was not the same as I. 
But what of it ? It meant nothing. Now it was a 
question. Something not to be mentioned. Some¬ 
thing fearful. What? I lay in bed and questioned. 
There was no answer. Only a something. And 
I could hear mother’s shocked voice repeating my 
crime to father. A word here and there. And 
then father’s heavy laugh, sobered at once by 
mother’s quick remonstrance. And I cried to my¬ 
self. I’m sure I must have cried myself to sleep. 
How can such stupid cruelty exist? Was mother 
blind? And it comes back to me now. Twenty 
years and I can still recall the feeling I had then 

— can still know what that shame and fear were 
like — can still writhe at the memory. And yet 

— and yet — mother loved me. I have only your 
best interests at heart, dear. . . . How many times 
has that sentence stirred me to silent, rebellious 
protest? And she meant every word, poor dear; 
every word came straight from her heart. 
Straight-laced and stiff-backed. I can see her now 
with the half perplexed and half worried look in 
her eyes. Life was dreadfully serious and there 
was only one answer to any problem: the answer 
willed by the multitude of mothers who had 
lived and died the generation before. She was 

[ 86 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

sincere. But what a curious quality of paradox 
her scrupulous sincerity held. Every emotion 
ticketed and in the right slot always ready to 
slip forth on the proper occasion and at no other 
time. How can any one be that way? When 
father died I wanted to cry. I couldn’t. The more 
I felt I should cry the farther away I was from 
tears. Oh dear, how worried I was sneaking into 
my bedroom. I said to myself, Father is dead. 
Dead. Do you understand what I say; can you 
realize that? Dead. Gone forever. And what do 
you feel? You loved him, didn’t you? All right. 
Why don’t you have some feeling about it ? Look 
at mother — she loved him and she shows it. 
How can you be so brutal ? have you no feeling ? 
I argued with myself, and the same unemotional 
calm stayed with me until I was ashamed at my 
own lack of feeling. And the tears flowed from 
mother’s eyes. Her heart seemed broken and she 
acted — and was — as a human being is sup¬ 
posed to be under such circumstances. I watched 
her in amazement. I could never understand; 
never have I been able to understand how people 
can react as they should when they can be con¬ 
scious of the fact that they should. It’s as if you 
were on the stage and the world waiting to see 
how you played your part. There was I wonder¬ 
ing how I should act and feel; there was mother 

[ 87 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

acting and feeling as all the world demanded. 
Every bit of her emotion was as natural and sin¬ 
cere as — as — a daybreak or a floating cloud. I 
am different, I said to myself, I am not like other 
people; things go deeper with me. How many, 
many times I’ve made that excuse! Giving a rea¬ 
son for what I know is a lie. But what was the 
difference? What was it? At the funeral it was 
the same dreadful way. Mother wept softly while 
the preacher talked and Aunt Georgia and Aunt 
Kate sat on either side and patted her hands. I 
could only sit still with my head bent. Wonder¬ 
ing. Wondering how in the world mother could 
be so wonderfully and accurately natural. Won¬ 
dering if Dr. Gardner meant what his soft, culti¬ 
vated baritone was saying, or if his words and the 
rise and fall of his tones were simply rote; won¬ 
dering why Mrs. Larkness should be crying too; 
wondering why I didn’t feel like crying and if 
I really would scream out loud the next minute. 
Then Emma Lou reached out and took my hand. 
How terribly, horribly embarrassing that was — 
what self-conscious agony. And when they sang. 
Oh! Aunt Kate with her high-pitched piercing 
voice drowning the low hum of the others. A 
wild, insane desire nudged me to laugh. It’s a 
wonder I didn’t. Laughs and funerals. Did no 
one else see how funny it was? I glanced around 

[ 88 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

quickly. Every one with head bowed, singing 
softly, men and women dabbing at their eyes 
with handkerchiefs. What did father s death 
mean to them ? Of course, it was the atmosphere. 
And mother steadily sobbing. I was a spectator 
apart gazing at a problem play I couldn’t under¬ 
stand. Does training do that or what, I wonder? 
Three days passed before I cried and then I cried 
all night long. I never have known why I cried. 
Yet the same day of the funeral, right after we 
returned from the cemetery, mother and Aunt 
Kate and Uncle Ben and Aunt Georgia talked 
over financial matters. They sat in the parlor 
and spoke with grave and professionally sympa¬ 
thetic voices. Their actions seemed so strange. 
If they hadn’t been crying so hard an hour before 
— but am I different ? That sort of thing is non¬ 
sense, Cordie says. She says no one is different 
from any one else except in degree. She would 
have called my feelings neurotic. All right. I 
don’t care. Perhaps I am neurotic. At least I’m 
not automatic and I don’t pour out emotion like 
a machine. But if neurosis is a matter of health 
then maybe I’m mechanical as much as mother. 
No, that couldn’t be so. She took everything for 
granted. I try to think things out, anyway. I am 
different from lots of people I know in many 
ways. 


[89] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Oh mother, mother, I loved you. You know I 
did. But why didn’t you try to understand me a 
little? You continually accused me of being self¬ 
ish and stony. Who made me that way? You 
were only thinking of other people and of what 
they would think. And you, too, father. You 
were a cold-blooded, narrow-minded man. God¬ 
fearing. A God-fearing man. That is what I’ve 
heard your old friends tell me you were. A God¬ 
fearing man! And the fear of God put the fear 
of everything else into you and you tried to 
instill that same fear into everybody around you. 
I know now. I couldn’t see it as a child, but I 
know now. Poor father. I don’t really hate him. 
I pity him. Respectability and religion were at 
the very core of his being. Only a real fear of 
God could have made religion such a nightmare 
of belief. There was nothing beautiful about it. 
God was a monster who tortured you and de¬ 
stroyed you and sent you to hell to be punished 
for millions of years if you didn’t learn his creed 
and catechism and if you didn’t go to Sunday 
school and church every Sunday. I couldn’t un¬ 
derstand how any person could be so mean. I 
asked why God did that and father said it was 
Divine Justice; and when I asked what was Divine 
Justice he was irritated and said, little children 
should not ask questions about such subjects; 

[90] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

they can’t understand. You must take what your 
elders teach without question. But questions came 
into my mind and stuck there unanswered and 
gave birth to more questions. They grew and 
made me unhappy. You had to do things be¬ 
cause God demanded it and you shouldn’t do 
other things because God would be angry. What 
was he like, this God? Why did he insist on 
such queer things? How could he be every¬ 
where? Where was he during the week when 
no one mentioned him? The questions that tor¬ 
tured my brain! The big revival of Dr. Paulsen. 
Oh! We sat on a front seat. A beautiful voice 
and long wavy gray hair, and such a lovely face: 
the sweet, gentle face of a saint. Could his God 
be the same father talked of and was so much 
afraid of? This God of Dr. Paulsen’s seemed a 
different sort of being. I wanted to ask father 
if they were the same but was afraid. I looked 
up at father and the expression of his face was 
new. I was startled and looked around at mother. 
Something had happened. I had never seen them 
like this. Their faces were — what? Softened, 
flowing, beatific. Yes, beatific. They were no 
longer my parents: a man and woman who were 
strangers. I was afraid and looked around at the 
sea of faces pale under the yellow lights of the 
big auditorium. Something had happened to 

[91] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

these people. What? I couldn’t understand and 
felt alone, far away from them, and their faces 
danced and melted into each other before my 
eyes. I stared again at Dr. Paulsen. What was 
he doing now? His arms were outstretched 
and his voice was pleading, his words came 
slowly. Behind him the organist was playing 
a hymn that was a long-drawn wail in soft bari¬ 
tone and bass chords. Confess unto Jesus . . . 
confess unto Jesus. . . . Confess. ... I caught 
that much. What did it mean? People were 
walking up to the front, passing under Dr. Paul¬ 
sen’s outstretched arms, and stumbling back to 
their seats, crying. Almost all were crying. What 
was happening to these people? Dr. Paulsen’s 
face was lovely, aglow. It shone. The expressions 
on familiar faces were new — all new. What 
was happening ? I was facing some deep mysteri¬ 
ous secret known to all but me alone. There 
went Emma Lou and Stella and then Austin and 
his mother and Gordon with his aunt. What did 
they mean? Why did they cry? Suddenly I was 
drawn to my feet. Mother’s hand held mine 
tightly and she pulled me after her. We stood 
under the outstretched arms of Dr. Paulsen. 

— Blessing of God and his beloved Son, Jesus 
Christ, be with you forever and forever. . . . 

We were back standing. Mother and father 

[92] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

singing with tears running unchecked down their 
cheeks, and that new strange and happy look 
in their faces. 

That night father kissed me good night and 
said, God bless my darling child, and mother 
came in and tucked me in and put her arms 
around me and held me tightly for a long time. 
I lay awake. Happy. It was one of the happiest 
nights of my life. Something had happened; I 
didn’t know w;hat it was; but now everything and 
everybody would be different. Mother and father 
would not be cross and stern with me. This must 
be a new God who had driven the old one out. 
He blessed and made you happy instead of pun¬ 
ishing you for doing what you liked to do and 
what mother and father called sins. A new world 
surrounded me as I lay there in bed and I went 
to sleep still wondering what had happened to 
Emma Lou and Gordon and Stella and Austin. 
For they had been crying, too, as they sang. To¬ 
morrow they would be different from the friends 
I had hitherto known them as being. 

To-morrow and a shattered dream. Awake 
with the same expectancy that Christmas morning 
brings, I remembered and almost danced for joy. 
But in my enthusiasm I was slow in dressing and 
mother came in and scolded me. The shock of 
amazement left me dumb and she scolded me for 

[ 93 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

looking stupid. A mirage had floated within my 
vision and had disappeared again. Nothing had 
really changed. It left me miserable. All day at 
school I furtively studied Emma Lou and Stella. 
They were the same as last week; they talked 
in the same way, laughed in the same way, did 
the same things they had always done. Only 
Gordon was quiet and kept apart to himself for 
several days. At recess he sat alone with serious 
face. But a few days passed and he was the 
Gordon before the revival. I can see now. He is 
like that: a dramatist of emotions; they are al¬ 
most impersonal to him. He is the actor and 
stage director and audience all in one. That’s a 
good description. I never thought of that before, 
a dramatist of his own emotions. He is always 
watching his emotions and acting up to them. 
That explains why the thrill of the revival stayed 
with him longer. But me. What about me? 
Why did the thrill not strike me? What a mor¬ 
bid little creature I must have been, left cold 
and unmoved by all that had stirred father and 
mother and all my friends, yet miserably de¬ 
pressed because their thrill was a passing moment. 
And it depresses to think of it now. I don’t feel 
superior to them. I don’t. I don’t. But such re¬ 
ligion seems so dishonest. I got a peep at some¬ 
thing I vaguely felt was beautiful. And it disap- 

[94] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

peared before my eyes. I only felt; I could not 
have known —that was all. But the memory is 
still there. And I was only twelve or thirteen, 
going on thirteen. Because that was the same 
year when father said I must go in the big girls’ 
class at Sunday school. How I hated that stupid 
class. Miss Annie and her wart with the long 
hairs curling right under her left eye, with her 
drippy sweet voice and her smug manner when 
she talked of Jesus and God. A horrid, dull 
meeting of overgrown girls with long faces giv¬ 
ing mechanical answers to mechanical questions. 
I wanted beauty. I didn’t know what I wanted 
then. But I know now, it was beauty. And there 
was no beauty. The well was dry. They let 
down the bucket and brought up dust. Beauty. 
Beauty. Religion can be beautiful; it has been 
beautiful. Martyrs and cathedrals, they were born 
of virgin beauty. Religion must be beautiful or 
it’s no longer religion; it’s a name without mean¬ 
ing. Religion? What do I know of religion? 
That was not religion I was thrust into, it was 
a fear. All my life I’ve been taught to fear some¬ 
thing. I’m sick of it. I’m afraid to do this, 
afraid to do that, when every ounce of intelligence 
I have tells me to go ahead. I suppose I’ll have 
to fight that idiotic battle as long as I live. Oh 
dear! And mother called me stubborn! Because 

[95] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

I wanted to know the why of things. If she could 
have known how lonesome I’ve been all my 
life. Lonesome. Mother, mother, if you could 
have known how lonesome I was; if you could 
only have understood what a horrible mystery 
you made of life for me. And when I think — 
the distress and miserable torture that haunted 
me when. . . . Your callous reticence at such a 
time. The anguish I suffered, and the knowl¬ 
edge that I had to suffer this through the years 
to come. To know that all women went through 
— that nothing could prevent nor help. It was 
a secret, an unclean secret which even women 
dared not discuss. And it came as an unexpected 
slap in the face. 

And with it came vague restless longings, fever¬ 
ish restlessness, a longing to be alone, a longing 
to be with some one. I wanted to weep. Only 
dreams consoled me. Not much. They came and 
in an instant they were gone. I read. Morning, 
noon and night I read romances. And great am¬ 
bitions coursed through my veins and I lived in 
a future far, far away from home and all that 
surrounded me. Men came into my life, a species 
of man yet unborn, beautiful, strong men who 
whispered words of charm and did mighty deeds 
for my sake. And little shivers of ecstacy came 
and went. The first buds of sex unknown and 

[96] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

unrecognized, that’s what I was undergoing. Sex, 
ugh — I’m sick of that word; that’s all you can 
hear now: sex this and sex that. But it was sex 
nevertheless. It seized me and I didn’t know 
what it was. I longed for what was unknown. 
Stop mooning over those silly books. I declare 
l thin\ m have to stop your reading altogether 
if this keep* on, filling your head with such trash . 
The books didn’t cause the mooning, mother, the 
mooning — but the sickening reaction. To come 
back to the dull drab prose of every day. Every 
day I studied myself in the mirror. The expres¬ 
sion with deep hidden meanings that would some 
day fill the world with admiration and awe. For 
the world could not yet understand. And then 
the flood of tears. Admiration and awe ? An un¬ 
clean creature who must be all her life unclean? 
Scoldings. I slam my door and throw myself 
across my bed and lie there. Misunderstood. No 
one understands me. I lie there biting the pillow. 
Stiff and tense. I get up and am careful not to 
look into the mirror as I undress. My body fright¬ 
ens me. I am ashamed to see it. And I bathe 
gingerly and self-consciously, fighting to keep my 
mind off my body. Tiptoe, tiptoe — downstairs 
and through the front door. Where are you go¬ 
ing, Chloretta? Oh dear, can I never be alone for 
a minute — must I always be telling where I am 

[ 97 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

going? Up-town mother. Indignant and raging 
for blocks. People pass and self-consciousness 
drives mother from my head; I look straight 
ahead; every one I pass, I am sure is staring at 
me steadily. Especially boys. Why boys ? I don’t 
know. But uncomfortably I feel they must be 
staring at me. Does an acquaintance bob up in 
the distance? Half a block away I begin to 
worry about speaking. I speak. For another half¬ 
block my arms swing stiffly, so it seems, until I 
reach the library. Thinking of what others will 
think. Saying to myself that they don’t count, 
yet worrying over their attitudes. Wanting to 
stand out from crowds and all the while hiding 
myself in them. What could Gordon have seen 
in me then? Afraid of boys, shy with girls, 
dreaming romances and writing away in the 
secret of my bedroom. He was nicer than the 
other boys I knew, gentler and — and nicer. He 
showed me his pictures. He told me his ambi¬ 
tions. That was a bond. He hated things too; 
he dreamed of being a great artist as I dreamed 
of being a great writer. He told me his dreams. 
I wanted him then but I didn’t know it. I 
couldn’t know. I didn’t know anything. I wanted 
to get away. Just as I do now. To get away. Run 
away. I know I can’t run away. But if I could 
only start over. Anew. A village in France. 

[98] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Or Italy. To see and live with new faces, new 
people, new languages, new customs. I’m sick 
of this meaningless kind of life I’m leading, all 
of it. I’m sick of it. Sick — sick — sick of it! 


[99] 


6 


Chlo suddenly sat up stiffly and for a few 
seconds glared at the dull haze where the 
open window cut through the darkness of 
the room. Drawing up her \nees she rested 
her head on them and closed her eyes . Wea¬ 
rily she rubbed her hand across her forehead 
to remove the irritating, clinging strands of 
damp hair. Then in a sudden fury she 
turned, viciously smoothed her pillow, and 
lay bac\. 

Oh, damn. Two damns. And damnation. 
There I go again. I who give Willa such lec¬ 
tures when she’s in the dumps. — A woman is 

[ 100 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

in the same boat as a man — she gets out of life 
what she puts into it; she gets just about what 
she deserves in the long run. — Are those really 
my words? That’s irony. They have the suspi¬ 
cious ring of one of }. P.’s platitudes. Could 
he have spoken them to me first? But I certainly 
remember lecturing Willa at lunch at Schrafft’s 
one day. What in the world was I feeling so 
cocky about? What — oh, I know. That mar¬ 
velous plot I had worked out for a short story. 
Buried away and never written. Starting and 
stopping — never finishing: that’s the way I do 
in everything. Well, I don’t care. What’s the use? 
Cordie says every idea we think is new was 
probably ridden to death by some old Greek cen¬ 
turies before the time of Christ. She must be 
right. All we ever take the trouble to think 
much about now are sex and money and they 
must have always been the chief worries. Motor 
cars and revues and cabarets and radio and biology 
and psychoanalysis and — oh dear, I’m lonesome! 
Why isn’t there some way to turn yourself wrong 
side out? I can’t remember when I wasn’t lone¬ 
some ! At home, at school — that dreadful party, 
that dreadful, dreadful party when the girls were 
passing through home to school! The bustling 
to and fro, slicing sandwiches, icing cakes, drag¬ 
ging out the best linen, giving Ida carefully de- 

[ioi] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

tailed instructions. —Now be sure you know 
where everything is, and make haste for it’s only 
three-quarters of an hour between trains. And for 
heaven’s sake don’t spill anything when you’re 
passing. And by the way, I want you to serve 
the tall, dark-haired girl first; that’s Janet Thal- 
mar — she’s a junior and the others are only 
sophomores like me. So be sure. Now remember 
— the tea first and with a napkin at the same time, 
then sandwiches, then the cake. — I was bubbling 
with excitement but when I started to speak to 
mother I was afraid my excitement and enthu¬ 
siasm would merely sound silly and stupid to 
her. I watched the clock. Three. The train had 
pulled in. They would be here any minute. My 
heart pat-patting against my ribs in excitement. 
Good old Janet, I said to myself, she is a spiff; 
she’ll be a big writer some day. A warm feeling 
for them all gushed up in me. Marie and Rosina 
and Margaret — they were all spiffs. It was nice 
to have them in my home, to entertain. 

— Chlo, what time does that train get in? 
Oughtn’t those girls be here by now ? — 

My heart jumps in a panic. I glance quickly at 
the clock, then catch myself. 

— Maybe the train is a little late. They’ll be 
here in a few minutes now, mother. — 

But I am uneasy. Six minutes past three — it’s 

[102] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

only four minutes’ walk from the station. Oh, 
they will be here in a few minutes. Of course 
they will. Casually I walk over to the window as 
if to straighten the curtain, and look up the 
street. There is old Mr. Gardner. I keep my 
eyes on the point where the street is hidden by a 
protruding house. The street is empty. Can the 
train be late? 

— Chlo, you’d better find out about that train. 
Everything is getting cold, and it’s almost fifteen 
minutes past now. Go ahead and call up the sta¬ 
tion, do you hear ? — 

— All right, mother, all right! The trains are 
never very late though: they’re sure to be here 
in a few minutes.— 

My heart is thumping; somewhere inside it is 
slowly dropping. A sudden thought seizes me 
and shakes me. Despair is settling over me and 
I can almost feel myself paling. Suppose they 
have forgotten to come — or just don’t care to. 
— Hello, is that information? Can you — can 
you tell me if number one-three-three has come 
in yet? One-three-three. . . . Oh! on time. 
Thank you.— I place the receiver back care¬ 
fully and walk back into the room where every¬ 
thing is so nicely arranged for my party. I walk 
over to the table and pick up a magazine. 

— Well! — 

[103] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

I try to answer carelessly. I simply can’t let 
mother know how hurt and ashamed I am. It’s 
too terrible. I dare not look up. 

— Train’s in, she said. I suppose they’ll be 
here in a few minutes. — 

— Well, I hope so. They won’t have much 
time if they don’t hurry up. I must say you take 
it mighty calmly. Looks to me as if they weren’t 
coming at all. Did she say if the train was on 
time ? — 

— I don’t care if they don’t come. What dif¬ 
ference does it make. — 

— Hush, Chloretta, don’t talk to your mother 
like that; it isn’t respectful. I’ve never seen any 
one so callous. I’d be worried to death if my 
friends didn’t care any more for me than that. — 

I thumb through the magazine without seeing 
what it is. They aren’t coming. A lump presses 
against my throat and my eyes sting. They don’t 
care. I’m nothing. Nobody. Sickening empti¬ 
ness that is a heavy weight inside. Minutes pass 
that are hours. Hoping when hope has fled. 

— Chlo, I’m afraid something’s happened and 
those girls aren’t coming. It’s half-past now.— 

— I — I guess they’re not. Well — I think I’ll 
run upstairs a minute.— 

I walk slowly from the room, trying to appear 
as if I am utterly indifferent. I try to hum. But 

[104] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

tears are welling up beyond my control. Once 
outside the room I rush upstairs. Oh! Oh! Oh! 
Sobs catch me before I can reach my room. I 
slam my door and throw myself across the bed 
and lie there, sobbing, sobbing. How awful that 
was! I hated people, the world, everything in 
life. Some day when I was a great writer! People 
would point me out as I drove past in my luxuri¬ 
ous limousine. Janet and Marie and Margaret 
would get all their old schoolmates together and 
arrange a grand reception for me. I would accept. 
Then at the last minute I would send a note tell¬ 
ing them that I was so sorry but balls were such 
a bore and I simply couldn’t give up my precious 
time and energy to these silly affairs. Oh, I would 
get even. What a lonesome little goop I was, and 
how I made myself suffer. Too sensitive, eh 
Cordie? That’s what you’d say, I know. 

But it’s frightful to feel lonesome and to keep 
on feeling lonesome; to dream and have no one 
to share your dreams. That must have started my 
hatred of school. I liked it the first year; I think 
I was impressed and awed, but the second year 
I hated school as much as I hated home. I cer¬ 
tainly did make an unhappy little ass of myself. 
It took me years to make myself believe that 
Janet and Marie and Margaret and Rosina weren’t 
laughing at me after my party. And Rosina never 

[105] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

did apologize. Oh dear! I thought the whole 
school knew and was laughing at me behind my 
back. When I saw two girls whispering to¬ 
gether— when I heard a girl laugh — my heart 
would jump. I was sure that I was the butt of 
every smile. Self-conscious. It’s born in me, I 
suppose, and I’ll never overcome it. At times 
I’ve had to argue with myself to persuade myself 
that Cordie and Willa weren’t talking about me 
when they were speaking in low tones. How 
can I be that way when I’ve always worked so 
hard to overcome it? I say to myself, you don’t 
care. You aren’t interested one way or the other 
in what they say about you. What difference 
does it make ? Or I say, they aren’t talking about 
you. Girls think about themselves, just as I’m 
thinking about myself, and not about you. What 
can I do? I always admit the truth of my argu¬ 
ments but it doesn’t do any good. And yet I don’t 
really care after all what people do say. The 
minute they are gone from my life I forget them. 
Only at school I felt like an outsider. But no 
wonder I was an outsider when I kept to my¬ 
self so much, never budging from my room in 
the evening. Jean laughed at me. But I didn’t 
dare tell her. How was I to know but what Jean 
— no, I was unfair to Jean about that. In the 
same room with her every night I should have 

[106] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

known better. But I couldn’t tell her. Gracious, 
wasn’t I frightened ? Who on earth could it have 
been I wonder? Well, I’ll never know now any¬ 
way. But oh what a disgusting — hey ho, hey ho, 
let’s forget — the moon has a shadow among — 
Gordon has beautiful hands — his skin is smooth 
and — fol-de-lol hey-ho-fol-de — if we two chil¬ 
dren had married when mother died where 
would we have been? —Papa. Mamma. What 
dress must I wear to-day, Mamma? Stop that 
crying. We’ll have onion soup for dinner, Mary, 
you know that Mr. Blake likes onion soup.— 
Married at nineteen, mother at twenty, in the rut 
for life. Thank heaven we didn’t marry then. 
But I’m not so sure. Could things have been worse 
than they are now ? Beautiful, slender hands, long 
and graceful. Smooth, clean skin to receive a 
woman’s caresses. You were different, Gordon. 
Funny. Tenseness died out when I was with you. 
You were sensitive and you were quick to fit into 
the moods of others. You said, I think I under¬ 
stand you, Chlo. You are not like the other girls 
I know; you are different — these others don’t 
see as you and I do; they don’t see the big things 
in life. I think you will write some wonderful 
books. Oh, we were serious. The world about us 
was a mass of wooden puppets without minds or 
souls; parents and daily chores were merely in- 

[ I0 7 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

conveniences from which time would relieve us 
on our upward climb above the dull, drab prose 
of everyday life. And my poems. You were so 
sweet about them, Gordon, and they must have 
been fearfully rotten and immature.— Great 
stuff, you said, great stuff, Chlo, there’s genius 
in that line, pure genius, you said, your forehead 
wrinkling with weighty criticism. That really is 
beautiful; repeat that line over again. And I 
always would. What was that line? Let’s see 
now: My soul steals away — I’ve forgotten. Oh, 
yes — And my soul soars afar in the night. Oh, 
dear. So young and so deadly in earnest. How 
the breath-taking thought of my own hidden 
genius drove shivers up and down my spine. But 
that was happiness. Childish and illusory though 
it may have been, happiness dwelt in the heart of 
those shining hours we spent in explaining how 
we understood each other and how the shallow 
world could never plumb our depths. 

Happiness? When I was free. Free. Ah! 
There was happiness. I’d like to feel that way 
again. Free with the world before me. Free 
to leave that humdrum town for New York. New 
York. Magic word! New York — where fame 
and glory and appreciation waited. I don’t be¬ 
lieve mother’s death struck the note of sadness 
in me that it should have. I was sorry. But the 

[i°8] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

thought of freedom blocked the path of sorrow. 
Even at the service the thought kept bobbing up; 
even when twinges of remorse showed me how 
horribly wrong I was being the thought would 
pop back again. I fought it. I loved you mother. 
What more could I do? For a dream planted 
years before, watered and nurtured from day to 
day, had burst forth into a glorious full-blown 
flower. Freedom! And but for that — what? 
Coming a year later, I believe, it would have been 
too late — I would have married Gordon by then, 
I think. Yes, I’m sure. I’m very — I wish to God 
it had come later. If I could only have known 
then what I — I wish — oh, Lord, I wish I had 
married him then. Little egotistical fool that I 
was! With my great ideas of myself and my 
genius. We would have been happy, for we 
wouldn’t have known any better. That’s like me 
to say that — wouldn’t have known any better. 
As if I know better now. Know what better? 
Know — know that life is the same rut no mat¬ 
ter where you slip in or when. 

But it is sweet to look back upon his proposal. 
He was born an artist to the tips of his long, 
graceful fingers. So gently and beautifully he 
talked. I wonder how much was artist even then 
that spoke, how much was heart. Now I’m get¬ 
ting sentimental. It was neither love nor art 

[109] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

really, it was moonlight and sensitive twenty. 
Spring. The fresh smell of late evening and the 
creak, creak of the chains as we monotonously 
swung back and forth in that lovely, ugly old 
wooden swing. The rare contentment that per¬ 
vaded me, intoxicated me, the contentment of 
satisfied longings, of possessing my future as my 
own property to trade with as I pleased. Desul¬ 
tory talk. Disjointed talk. I was dreaming dreams 
and in the happiness they painted I was alone, un¬ 
sharing. Creak, creak. What a lovely old swing. 
What a restful, soothing creak it had. Gordon 
reached out and closed his hand over mine. 

— And now, Chlo, are you really going to New 
York and live there and work all by yourself? — 

His question intensified the exultant mood that 
held me. I was gazing at him from the heights 
of an unconsciously assumed wisdom. I felt older, 
superior, thrilled to a secret pride in the feeling. 
I’m sure I must have exhaled a smug superiority 
when I spoke. A genius who was at last going 
forth to bring the world to bent knees at her 
feet. My superiority was a stone dropped into the 
still waters of my contentment, sending out shal¬ 
low ripples of sympathy. He is so young, poor 
boy, was the thought the ripples carried and 
spread, so young. I have never realized before 
how much older I am than he; we are worlds 

[ 110 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

apart after all. It is so hopeless to try to make 
him understand the subtle meanings life holds for 
me. I gazed down at him patronizingly from the 
heights of my wisdom. 

— Yes, Gordon. I’m going to New York all by 
myself, to live all by myself. It’s a beautiful dream 
come true. I’m going where I can live and see 
life. Just think of it, Gordon; isn’t it terribly 
exciting? In New York to do as I please and 
go where I please. To be through with Acton 
for good and all. Art and literature and music 
and the theatre — oh! All the things in life that 
really mean something. Those are the things 
in life I must have. And now I’m going to have 
them. I’m going to make them my daily bread 
and meat. Where I can know real writers and 
thinkers, the worth while minds of the world. 
Where I can think and work and carve out my 
destiny. Of course, I’m going, Gordon. After 
the way we’ve talked of New York? Of course, 
silly. Oh! Won’t it be perfectly marvelous? 
Don’t you think it’s wonderful? 

Was there ever a more smug little snob than I? 
Carve out my destiny! A brilliant lot of carving 
I’ve done. But at that, I don’t suppose I was worse 
than other girls of my age. Just a different slant 
I took. How about Jane with all her talk of 
romance and her bunch of frat pins? —I can’t 

[in] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

help it if I am popular. Bob actually threatened 
suicide if I wouldn’t become engaged to him, 
and Red was just as bad. I try to keep them off, 
but honest, I can’t. Some girls are just born to be 
pursued by men. It isn’t our fault. ... — Of all 
drivel — little hypocrite, always reading sticky 
romances and quoting poetry. Oh, rot! What 
right have I to talk? Well — at least I didn’t 
quote Mrs. Browning and run after every boy 
who came along. Better if I had, perhaps. Good 
Lord, why should I get indignant after all these 
years? Pretty bad. I was thinking of — oh, yes, 
Gordon was silent for a long time after I had 
spoken. Back and forth in the swing. Creak, 
creak. He kept clearing his throat until I noticed 
and his hand was becoming warm and uncom¬ 
fortably moist in mine. His voice was throaty 
and trembled slightly. 

— Ye-es, it’s wonderful. But why don’t you wait 
a little while. I mean — well, you know, Chlo, 
to think it out, that is, to plan out your future — 
you know what I mean — this is a big thing 
you’re doing, one of the biggest steps any one 
ever took. I mean — that is — you know, Chlo. — 

What is he driving after? Is he going to act 
as all the rest of them are doing? He’s talking 
just like Aunt Kate and Aunt Georgia. I wish 
people would let me alone: I know what I’m do- 

[112] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

ing without every one in town offering advice. — 

— What are you talking about, Gordon? I’ve 
told you a thousand times I’m going. What 
should I stay here to plan about? We’ve talked 
it over enough and you’ve helped me plan enough, 
goodness knows, without bringing it up now. 
I know how to take care of myself. Don’t be 
silly. — 

— I’m not being silly, Chlo. And I’m not try¬ 
ing to talk you out of New York. I don’t want to 
stay here and rot any more than you do, and I’m 
not either. But — but — this is a serious step 
you’re taking, you know, and I just — I just — 
I mean why don’t you wait a little while. You’ve 
got plenty of time and — 

— But, Gordon, I’m nineteen now. Why, I’m 
grown up. I can’t wait longer or I’ll be an old 
woman before I ever get started doing anything. 
You can’t wait to begin writing, you know: ‘art 
is long and time is fleeting.’ Why, Gordon, I 
never thought youd — 

— No, please, Chlo, I’m not — not — trying to 
— you know what I mean. Of course, I think 
you’re too big for Acton — and New York is 
where you belong — but all Vm saying is that 
you might wait a while. I’m going to New York 
too. You know that. I don’t fit this place any 
more than you do. We’re both different, Chlo. 

[113] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

But I was only thinking — well — eventually I’m 
going to New York too, you see, and I just 
thought — you know — you see — 

— But I don’t see at all. What difference does 
that make? I’ll be in New York when yoi/ get 
there. Perhaps I’ll know enough artists by the 
time you come to help you out a lot. Oh! I’m 
glad I thought of that. I’ll tell them all about 
you.— 

— That’s not what I was talking about, Chlo. 
You see, the point is this — well — you see — why 
can’t you wait a little and we can both go to¬ 
gether and make our future there together. I’m 
going too when I come into my money — and 
why can’t we marry — and — and — 

— Why, Gordon — 

— Yes, I know, Chlo. I don’t mean to marry 
and live the silly way most people do. You know 
I’m different from those kind of people. But we’re 
both artists and we have such a deep understand¬ 
ing. And — we can be such a wonderful help 
to each other and do things together and see 
things together. I can paint and you can write. 
And I’ll illustrate all your books and stories. We 
can become famous together. Think how won¬ 
derful that would be. And you know no other 
artist could understand your work as well as I 
could. Think of the wonderful future we would 

[ 114] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

have together. Won’t you do that, Chlo? Won’t 
you? — 

He is hurting my hand. If he had only kissed 
me, or taken me in his arms or done something. 
But he talks, he only talks. And suddenly I feel 
so weak and uncertain and restless. Oh, dear! 
He is squeezing my hand and leaning over me. 
— Won’t you, Chlo, he repeats again. His hand 
is moist and his breath warm against my cheek. 
Emotions tumble over each other and wear down 
my strength until I am left listless and passive. 
I wonder would I have given in had he kissed 
me? I don’t know. But he leans back and re¬ 
leases my hand. And I am angry. Suddenly I 
am furiously angry. Without knowing why, I 
hate him. But I know now why it was. I’m 
sure it was because he didn’t kiss me; because 
instead of crushing me in his arms he left me 
sitting there in that listless, expectant frame of 
mind. Else, why should I have recalled it all so 
often and so long afterward and pictured so many 
different delicious things he might have done? 
But that was funny. I thought I was angry be¬ 
cause he was interfering with my plans and mak¬ 
ing me feel uncomfortable and selfish. But I 
really wanted him, without knowing it, and he 
only talked, and I really wanted him, and was 
ready to receive his kisses and have his smooth 

[115] 


ONE —TWO —THREE — FOUR 

skin close against mine. What utter idiots we are. 
But as I answer him my self-control returns and 
with it the new superiority that for a moment 
has fled. Yet at the same time I am ready to cry. 

— No, I won’t. I shall never marry. Never. 
And — and — I don’t see why you talk this way. 
I’m not made like most women — to be tied down 
as a slave in the home. I’m made for bigger 
things in life. I’m going to write, and marriage 
shall never get in my way. You know I don’t 
believe in marriage; for myself, I mean. It’s 
taking all the meaning out of life; it would mean 
making my writing a secondary affair. I can’t 
give up my freedom, and I won’t. It means too 
much. I want to see other people and do other 
things. I’ve got to go my own way alone. So 
there. — 

— Ah, Chlo, I don’t mean for you to give up 
writing or be the kind of married couple you’re 
thinking about. I want to be — to be partners, 
to strike out and conquer life together, to win 
fame together — I don’t want you to give up any¬ 
thing. But it’s awfully lonesome to go at every¬ 
thing alone. Of course —if you don’t like me 
enough, that’s different. But I thought — you 
know I — I’ve always been — and felt — that we 
understood each other — you do love me, Chlo? 
Don’t you, Chlo? You do love me, don’t you? 

[ n6 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Say you do. But if you don’t care, of course — 

— That’s not fair, Gordon, and you know it 
isn’t fair. How much I like you has nothing to 
do with my going to New York. If I were will¬ 
ing to marry at all I’d rather marry you than any 
man I know. I think you’re as sweet as you can 
be, but I am wiping out all my past and conse¬ 
crating my life to — to literature. It’s almost a 
sacred trust.— 

— That’s what I mean, Chlo. It is a sacred 
trust. And I want to help you guard it and keep 
it untouched and sacred. If you really loved me 
you couldn’t be so cold-blooded about it. I tell 
you I feel the same about marriage as you do 
and I hate this cut and dried business of settling 
down and doing nothing else but run a home as 
much as you do. I want you to be as big a success 
as a writer as I as a painter. We can be such a 
help to each other. Chlo, please don’t run off this 
way. Why won’t you wait and marry me ? Please, 
Chlo, we can be so wonderfully happy doing 
everything together, Chlo.— 

— I’m terribly sorry, Gordon. But there’s 
something in me bigger than myself calling 
me away. If I could only say what won’t go 
into words. Perhaps I do love you. I’m not 
sure that I know what love is. I like you lots bet¬ 
ter than I do any boy I know. But I cant marry 

[117] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

you. I hate marriage. I — I don’t want children, 
and every one who is married has children. It 
makes me shudder to think of settling down in 
an apartment or house raising children, doing 
the same thing each day, forgetting how to 
think. I don’t know — but — but it seems to me 
married women miss everything. Look at all 
the married women here, and how much do they 
get from life ? I don’t want to spend all my time 
gossiping and saying silly things and being re¬ 
spectable and keeping up appearances and look¬ 
ing after meals and things. I want to get away 
from seeing it just as quick as I can. I want to 
be alone and write alone. I’m afraid you’ll never 
understand me, Gordon.— 

— I know so what you mean, Chlo. Of course 
I understand you. And I’m the same. You know 
we’d be different. — 

— You say that now, Gordon. But would it be 
that way? I’ve heard mother and father speak 
of the time they were engaged, and I could hardly 
believe my ears, but when they got married they 
became like all others. I don’t believe it lasts 
when people marry. You get to know each other 
too well. I’m awfully sorry, Gordon. I do like 
you awfully and I shall miss you terribly, but I 
must follow the path of my future. — 

Gordon is standing. I can’t see his face, but 
the artist in him is speaking. No emotion 

[n8] 


can 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

drown the artist; it rises to the surface and takes 
command. Our moods are soaring. Romantic 
gestures are waving aside realities. I am exalted 
by my own words. 

— Good bye, Chlo. We can always be good 
friends, can’t we ? Some day you will understand. 
Some day I’m going to New York too. If there’s 
anything I can ever do, you will let me know, 
won’t you? I shall never forget our talks, they 
have been the biggest things in my life. Won’t 
you — won’t you kiss me good bye, Chlo ? — 

The beauty of our parting sweeps me through 
and through. It is a beautiful tragedy, and I 
vainly seek, in that instant, to recall some stir¬ 
ring romantic scene to compare with it. As I 
slowly rise, I have a feeling that we are in the 
midst of an exquisite moment. The same thrill as 
if I were reading a sad, charming love scene in 
Pride and Prejudice. Gordon must sense our fare¬ 
well in the same manner. We are actors playing 
our parts without previous rehearsal. We are 
actors nevertheless. I bend forward, instinctively 
with half-closed eyes. I feel his breath, then a 
soft moist touch partly brushing my lips, partly 
my left cheek. I open my eyes. He has turned. 
I watch him, fascinated, as he clumps down the 
steps and walks swiftly up the sidewalk. He does 
not glance back. The sense of a great and beau¬ 
tiful renunciation holds me in rapt ecstacy. 

09] 


7 


Chlo half jumped, half rolled, from her bed. 
For a moment she stood indecisively on the 
coarse rug at the side of the bed, until almost 
automatically her bare feet began to fumble 
for their worn sil\ mules. I \now what Til 
do, she whispered to herself. With out¬ 
stretched arms and screwed-up eyes, she 
shuffled noiselessly through the door and 
closed it slowly behind her. Having switched 
on the light she hurried into the pantry and 
returned with a glass of mil\. She placed it 
on the window sill, pulled up the easy chair, 
walked across the room and switched off the 

[120] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

light, felt her way bac\, and with a sigh of 
relief dropped into the chair . She twisted 
her legs across the front of the chair seat . 

This will simply not do at all. What started 
my brain on this wild goose chase? It’s perfect 
nonsense to let myself go this way. It’s just about 
time, anyway, that I cut out these stupid, sensu¬ 
ous night memories. I’ve let that habit grow on 
me steadily ever since — there I go again. I’m 
grown up; I ought to control my mind better 
than that. It is thoroughly childish. If I keep on 
I shall create an — now what did Cordie call 
that ? An inc— oh, I know — an incubus. What 
a curious name and what an awful perversion. 
I don’t see how Cordie can study and think about 
such horrid things all the time and be so healthy 
and normal and boisterous and love loud colors so 
much. Yet she never lies awake at night and tor¬ 
tures herself with doubts and absurd longings as 
I do. It must be in my blood. I suppose it’s be¬ 
cause father and mother wrestled and fought with 
their morals all their lives. And they’ve passed 
it on to me. Oh, dear! It’s so maddening to 
realize that you can’t escape your past. I can 
though. Any one can if she will only make the 
effort. I’ll start to-morrow morning. I’ll take a 
sheet of paper and map out a regime of reading 

[l2l] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

and thinking. But what’s the use? I know I 
won’t. How many times have I started regimes 
to-morrow? And has a single one ever been 
carried through to the end ? No. I’m what I am 
and I don’t suppose I’ll ever be anything else. 
I and my dreams of me! The genius I was going 
to be — and I can’t even pluck up heart and pa¬ 
tience to attempt writing any more. 

Why didn’t I marry Gordon before I left home ? 
Drifting and drifting. Throwing off one illu¬ 
sion to-day to wear another to-morrow. That is 
funny though — our two proposals. Could any¬ 
thing in the world have been more grotesque? 
If only the old gods still lived to sit back and 
laugh, what a glorious chuckle they would have 
over me. To think that the naive and unwordly 
reasons I had for refusing Gordon should be the 
same wordly and sophisticated ones he throws 
in my face ten years later. Ten years to switch 
illusions! This is a sweetly logical life we lead. 
Or was either of us right? Or both? After all 
is there anything that is not illusion? Philoso¬ 
phers are nothing but little boys building houses 
with blocks; one gets his house half built and an¬ 
other kicks it over and starts one of his own and 
it’s kicked over in its turn. Playing with words 
and ideas and getting nowhere. That’s a very 
good metaphor. I shall have to remember to 

[122] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

pull it on Cordie some time. No I won’t. She’d 
only laugh at me and ask me what trick crowd 
I’ve been playing with. I wish I could catch her 
spirit. If she believes a thing she does it and lets 
the world go hang. My thoughts are as independ¬ 
ent as hers but I never can live up to them. 
The trouble is, every little breeze that fans me 
changes the direction of my ideas. Look at the 
mess I’ve got myself into. And what shall I do? 
Do I have to keep up this monotonous sort of 
living for the rest of my life? I haven’t got the 
nerve to break away; I’m afraid of my friends 
laughing at me; I’m afraid of what people will 
say about me; I’m afraid even to look the thing 
in the face. All I have the courage to do is to lie 
in bed at night and dream of what could have 
been and what might be. 

How long can I go along this way? I can’t 
keep this up forever. I’ll break. I’ll become a 
nervous wreck. Does a single night pass that 
thoughts don’t enter my head and unravel all the 
resistance the day has built up? Will power? 
Whoever says there is such a thing as will power 
lies. He lies, I say. With all his tiresome clever¬ 
ness, that’s one thing Tommie said that was true. 
— All this stuff you read about will power and 
self-control is plain old everyday rot. When 
any one talks to you about these two birds, will 

[123] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

power and self-control, you just say, is that so? 
Now here’s the little joker. You’re criss-crossed 
with a bunch of sensations that assail you every 
second — every smallest part of a second. One of 
these sensations asks you to do this; and another 
asks you to do that; and so on ad nauseam. But a 
lot of them are stronger than others — either in 
number or individual strength. You know — due 
to getting more exercise or having been with you 
longer and all that sort of thing. So a question 
comes up. And who wins? The old timers, of 
course. And they gather in camp from three 
directions: one bunch creeps in at birth; another 
crowd is bred into you; fear sends the rest. And 
believe me, you do just about what those old 
fellows say. Don’t you ever pull that bunk about 
will power and self-control on me again. Now 
take me — 

Dear old Tommie. Or he would have been dear 
if he had kept his hands and shoes clean and if 
he hadn’t been so ugly and made love to me. 
Ugh — what terrible lips he had. If he only 
hadn’t tried to make love to me. But that’s all 
any man has in the back of his head. Sooner 
or later, no matter what they are talking about, 
they get around to making love. And most men 
are such awful, hairy, ugly creatures. Either so- 
called respectable men are such fools and bores, 

[ I2 4 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

or all the men worth talking and listening to 
always spoil everything by trying to make love. 
Why couldn’t Tommie and I have stayed friends 
without his ruining it by — oh what a beast he 
was. And how he scared me. The true deca¬ 
dent, he called himself. The most normal product 
of his age, he said, because he was one of the most 
sensitive and most useless. —That little fin de 
siecle group of amateurs thought they had created 
a new spirit when they discovered the ecstasy of 
decadence. Why, the appearance of decadence 
on the horizon is the sign of the dawn — and the 
sunset too — of any ripening civilization. Deca¬ 
dence has ushered in every civilization the world 
has ever known — and then kicked it out. Egypt 
and Greece and Rome — each painfully raised 
her civilization to manhood, and all the time she 
was really nurturing the twin, decadence, too. 
And in the end decadence throttled civilization. 
It always does. What do you think saved China 
and India so long from disaster? Their gods, of 
course. For decadence will have no gods. Deca¬ 
dence is built on logic — the logic of the senses. 
It is the perverted joy of decadence to play with 
gods as a cat plays with mice before devouring 
them. Why, were just beginning to touch the 
threshold of our civilization. We have only a 
few real decadents in this country so far: Fitz- 

[ 125] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

gerald, Faulkner. And they’re like Whitman and 
Blake; they’re still ahead of their time. The real 
decadents won’t arrive until another ten years. 
Poe ? Bierce ? They were no more decadents than 
this fellow de Casseres or Sherwood Anderson 
— they were monomaniacs who happened to be 
artists. I thought at one time there might be 
hopes in Mencken. But he’s gone the way of 
many a good man: he fought reform and bunk so 
hard that he turned professional reformer against 
reformers. Only in France have they scaled the 
heights, and France is doomed, she’s sliding now. 
When such animals as Tzara, Breton, Vitrac and 
their like cut loose, glorious decadence was blos¬ 
soming in the land. 

— And to-day England is coming along nicely, 
thank you. There’s Huxley and his cohorts. No 
blind groping to that fellow. The perfect ex¬ 
ample of the evolution of the true decadent. 
Here’s a lad raised in an atmosphere of science 
and learning seldom equaled. Born along with 
the broadest and most far reaching doctrine ever 
developed since Christianity stunted the growth 
of the world. Evolution was almost his twin. 
Biology — psychology — evolution — as a child 
his ears must have been attuned to what was 
probably the most brilliantly intellectual conversa¬ 
tion of that time. And see the outcome; see what 

[126] 


* 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

he does with it; see how exquisitely, with what 
nonchalance he dangles the futility of it all be¬ 
fore us. He is the logical outcome of the peak 
of civilization: the true decadent. The straight 
course of blind evolution. Baudelaire, Comte de 
Lisle, even Huysmans — they were children in 
comparison. They came too early and made the 
fatal mistake of taking decadence seriously. Not 
even his most cherished unbeliefs and disillu¬ 
sions should be taken seriously by a civilized man. 
Only his emotions. 

— You see — when you throw off religion, ethics 
and morals and all that rot automatically follow. 
And you have only one thing left: art. And art 
without religion — without gods — turns within 
itself and becomes simply an attempt to freeze an 
emotion — any emotion — into some concrete 
form. When we live for the thrill of emotion — 
when we see the joke of our serious daily antics — 
when the reformers gird for battle — you may 
be sure decadence is marching on us. Civil¬ 
ization is here. 

— You say, Chlo, you don’t believe in a god. 
You say you are interested in actions and emotions 
— the inner lives of the people around you. All 
right then, look straight down into yourself. 
Now don’t shirk. See what is happening. Put 
it down. That’s all art amounts to. Dig out the 

[ 127] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

sensation that’s living back in the darkest shadows 
and eating at you. Drag it into the light. That’s 
art. Nothing gives quite the same emotional 
thrill to a highly sensitized mind as does this 
intellectual decadence. 

— What’s the use though? You won’t. You 
have no business trying to write. You’re tied up 
in knots. If I ever so much as mention love you 
draw into yourself. Oh, I know I’m not the 
prettiest man in the world; but I know how to 
make love the most beautiful thing on earth. 
Come: let me teach you love. Let me show you 
what an exquisite emotion it can be. Oh, never 
mind. I might as well be talking to a stone wall. 
Don’t worry. I shan’t urge you. But you can’t 
fool me, Chlo. No one’s made of ice inside. You 
have inside you what’s inside of every human be¬ 
ing above the age of fifteen — and it will come 
out. You can’t keep it back; sooner or later out 
it pops. Either mentally or physically — or both. 
Now it would be much better for you to have a 
chap like me for a lover than some poor idiot 
who doesn’t know the first thing about love and 
who will get you in the end with some Galahad 
line of talk if you don’t stir beyond your shell a 
bit. Chlo, you’re such a lovely person if you 
would only throw off this absurd cloak of a nun. 
Let me teach you love. Let me show you.— 

[128] 


ONE — TWO — THREE — FOUR 

This the end of all his speeches. His theories, 
his ideas hypnotized and his endings were rude 
awakenings as if some one had dashed cold water 
in my face. His red full lips and the coarse hair 
on the back of his hands and fingers as he ges¬ 
tured. His adam’s apple protruding. I rushed 
from him. In my room I quickly undressed in 
the dark and crawled hurriedly into bed. Phrases 
and sentences of his drifted across my mind. 
What he had said of love. His face stood before 
me for an instant and I fought it off with the 
image of Gordon. Gordon. What a contrast. 
They clashed before me. The sensual face of 
Tommie and the memory of Gordon and his sweet 
and gentle good bye when I left home. They 
used to jump before my eyes as I floated into 
sleep and startled me wide-awake with a pound¬ 
ing heart. But I was lonely. How and why did 
I stand it? A whole year in New York without 
friends. Almost no acquaintances and swiftly 
bored with those I had met. Cooped up in a 
boarding house with men and women as non¬ 
descript as a troop of soldiers seen at a distance. 
And even more miserable, perhaps, than I. Those 
cross-street boarding houses of New York. What 
a vast horde of starved hopes they shelter within 
their dingy, smelly walls. I with my neat pad of 
paper spread before me each morning. Staring 

[129] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

through my narrow window at the patient, 
shabby back of the dreary house opposite. Al¬ 
ways a bottle or a pitcher or a few cans in the 
windows. Windows whose wood-work had fore¬ 
sworn all color many years before, whose blinds 
had permanently settled into a drab blotch of 
grayish-green against the tired bricks; windows 
that leer and jeer back at me as I stare at them 
seeking inspiration. They depress me. Intensify 
my loneliness. I turn from them to my neat pad 
of blank paper. I stare at the white surface. It 
too stares back, leaps forward and recedes. What 
shall I write? What have I to write about? My 
heart sinks. The story that was to make the 
world sit up and stare in amazement. Where has 
it fled? Or was it ever there? Gordon — where 
is he now — a moist kiss half on the mouth, half 
on the cheek — suppose I can write after all — 
I want to get away — I can’t write — I have noth¬ 
ing to write — I wish you were here Gordon — 
is that empty milk bottle going to stay in that 
window forever — there I am again staring 
through that narrow window. I jump from my 
chair. This won’t do, I say to myself in a kind of 
agony. I’ll take a walk in the park. Oh, dear, 
that terribly muggy boarding house. It’s a won¬ 
der I lived through a year and a half of such a 
nightmare. Tommie, of course. If it had not been 

[ 130] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

for Tommie I’d have — I don’t know what I 
would have done. I really believe I was growing 
desperate. Loneliness and the gnawing dread of 
empty, lifeless days ahead were attacking me. I 
faced my pad of paper each morning with a 
clutching fear at my heart. What could I say that 
this cold-blooded, swiftly passing world would 
give heed to? And I doubted my intelligence. I 
was losing the blind childish faith that brought 
me to New York. I wished I wiere at home. And 
the wish was killed by the knowledge of how 
miserable I had been there. That was impossible. 
But it has always been the same. Bumping into 
a blind alley here, stumbling out into another. 
Happy and excited and on top of the world one 
minute, the next dragged into the lowest depths 
— trying to run away, away from myself and 
every one else. Shutting the world from my im¬ 
agination and substituting one of my own. Only 
to destroy that in turn and dream another. This 
mad crowd pouring down the streets under the 
shadows of huge, ugly piles of brick and stones, 
jostling, pushing, banging, tense. What is their 
hurry? They worry me. I walk along the street 
and look at them. Am I one of these? They 
make so much noise and go so swiftly and never 
cease. They mix my thinking. Nothing is good 
sense. A thought dies half born. Why do they 

[131] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

have to race like that? Are they trying to run 
away as I do? Are they worried too? Is each 
one worried by every other one as each one wor¬ 
ries me? And a little window facing a dreary 
brick wall with other run-down windows jeering 
back and making faces. Pads of clean white pa¬ 
per that scorn words. Long talks with Tommie on 
the doorstep or in the Sixth Avenue tea room. 
Ugly Tommie. Reporting for a newspaper. 
Sneering at his work and all humanity. Laughing 
at everything and everybody. 

— Write? —That was the first time we had 
spoken together. — What have you got to write ? 
Why should you try to write to these swine? 
There are only two kinds: those who have the 
coin and those who haven’t. The only difference, 
one tramps all over those who haven’t to get it, 
and those who haven’t trying to tramp over all 
the others too, but can’t. All the stuff any of them 
want to read is something to show them how they 
can best do it. This is the day of selling, Miss 
Harding. If you want to make a living or a name 
you’ve got to sell: anything, it doesn’t make any 
difference what. But sell. You have nothing to 
sell. There are a few of us, and we are growing 
in number, who don’t want to sell. We deca¬ 
dents. We moderns. We expressionists. We’ll 
have our day. But even at that I’ve a sneaking 

[ J 32] 


ONE — TWO — THREE-FOUR 

suspicion we are posing just a little because we 
can’t fall in line and try to tramp on others too. 
That’s decadence too, to look inside yourself and 
rejoice in discovering that fat, comfortable lie 
you find reposing there while you were all un¬ 
conscious of it. Your trouble is that you won’t 
look, and it wouldn’t give you any pleasure if 
you did, to find that you’re kidding yourself as 
much as all the rest of us. — 

Ugly Tommie with his eternal decadence. But 
oh how I loved it. For a while he was like a 
breath of cool, fresh air playing across the stale 
despondency of my mind. Even his repulsive 
ugliness fascinated me at first. We were tied by 
the bond of loneliness. What else could it have 
been? His talk. Yes, he led me into new chan¬ 
nels, useless channels. I listened. Books had a 
new interest. I devoured them, devoured parts 
of them. Enough to discuss them glibly and 
with misunderstanding. Habits never die. When 
in all my life have I read any but the simplest 
novel through right from beginning to end? 
The half-begun books scattered and strewn along 
the path of my past. My unopened Shakespeare 
dutifully dragged into every new room or apart¬ 
ment and set up to let their faded backs fade yet 
a little more; Schopenhauer with only two essays 
touched; books on art, on literature, essays, poems, 

[133] 





ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

biographies, plays, histories — the things I start 
and never finish. To-day they thrill me with a 
fine enthusiasm, to-morrow they have lost their 
meaning and I gaze at them with dread. Each 
in its turn becomes a task; it has become stale 
overnight. The world is shifting too rapidly. 
Where do they fit into these changing scenes? 
Outlines. Bring in the outlines. Give me the 
names and a few dates. That’s all I’ll take the 
trouble to get anyway. I think I’m sophisticated, 
scornful of this silly, money-thinking age, of 
efficient men, superior to slangy girls who try to 
imitate them in everything. They make life a 
rotten joke, I say to myself. Well, what of it? 
What more do I make of it ? — The most beauti¬ 
ful thing in New York — said Tommie — is the 
inside of St. Patrick’s at dusk. The silence. The 
grim outlines of the pillars and arches softened 
in the dim light. Slender streaks of gold steal¬ 
ing gently across the space in patches that grad¬ 
ually die against the surrounding haze. Here and 
there the yellow flame of a candle — so still that 
it might be a solid mass of metal. A man or a 
woman tiptoes to the center behind the pews, 
kneels, and makes the sign of the cross, ap¬ 
proaches the bowl of holy water and dips in a 
finger, an obeisance, and tiptoes out — a remote 
spectre existing only in a picture. The expression 

[134] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

of all the longings and desires that whip us 
through life. It has no meaning: an emotion that 
justifies itself merely by being. — 

I go to St. Patrick’s by evening. It is as Tommie 
says. But I am conscious that I deliberately re¬ 
call what he said of it. The beauty of it sinks 
into me for an instant. But I find myself asking, 
does that man standing nearby see that I am an 
unusual girl, that I am drinking this in with the 
emotion of one who sees the beauty of things 
hidden to ordinary beings? I shift my position 
and gaze through half closed eyes at the distant 
altar that he may know I am drinking in the 
scene as a connoisseur. I stroll out with backward 
glances — in this direction and that. I pass to 
the street and stand for a moment staring ahead. 
Men and women pass. What stupid people, I say 
to myself. I am exultant. I look down upon them 
with detached superiority. I can write. I shall 
write now while this glorious mood of genius 
is upon me. And I rush home. The cold breath 
of my tiny room strikes me. I sit down and 
through the window the black mass of bricks 
and dingily lighted windows meet my eyes un- 
blinkingly. I am lonesome. So lonesome. I shall 
not write to-night. For a long time I do not 
move. I am depressed. I want to cry. Tommie 
drops into my mind. What an ass. I shudder. 

[ J 35 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Decadence, decadence and emotions and beauty. 
What rot. With his nasty ugly face. It’s nothing 
but a pose. Pose. Everywhere. I want Gordon. 
Gordon was clean and beautiful and — I jump 
from my chair and switch on the light. Read. 
Read what ? I go over them one by one. They all 
look dull and hopeless. I take one out and then 
roughly push it back. Not that. Leaning over 
the little blue-painted bookcase my eyes fill with 
tears. I rush to the bed. . . 


[136] 


8 


Chlo was standing before the window. She 
rested her hands on the sill and glanced down 
into the little courtyard three flights below, 
where vaguely outlined was one stunted tree. 
In spite of the thic\ heat a slight shudder 
seized her. She felt her way past the easy 
chair in which she had been sitting and 
slipped bac\ into the bedroom. Before get¬ 
ting into bed she leaned over and smoothed 
out the sheet. 

Whoa, whoa there, old girl, you’re choking up 
now over something that died years ago. I’m 
going to put everything out of my head. Every- 

[137] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

thing. Nothing. I shall concentrate on the word: 
nothing. I’m thinking of nothing. Nothing. My 
back itches. Nothing. One — two — three — four 
— Tommie was fun if he hadn’t insisted on mak¬ 
ing love. Love. No. Nothing. I must think of 
nothing. Let’s see now. One — two — three — 
four — Tommie was really a peach in many ways 
I wonder where I would have drifted if he hadn’t 
got me the magazine job. I couldn’t have kept up 
that joke of writing forever. I owe him a lot I 
suppose. But his eternal insinuations and love 
making! And he grew so morbid and violent 
about it. If I had shown a grain of sense. But 
no man had ever acted that way before toward 
me. How was I to know how to handle him? 

I never dreamed that a man could make love 
in so — so roughly. Oh, I had a lot to learn then. 
But what’s it all worth after it’s learned? Am I 
any better off now than I was then? I doubt it. 
No happier at least; lonesome as I was, I had 
some queer sort of faith and ideals to fall back 
on; now I’ve lost those. Only dreams are left. 
Silly, unutterable dreams that sicken me with re¬ 
morse when I wake for an instant and see them 
for what they are. And I go back to them and 
back to them in spite of myself. When Tommie 
grabbed me and pulled me into his arms. That 
morbid wandering reception room with its 

[138] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

dingy red plush sofa and cheap garish landscape 
painting hovering over it — what a horrid, shiv¬ 
ery room to make love in! Without warning. 
Whispering. Almost growling. His moist thick 
lips and his hot, heavy breath sending cold shiv¬ 
ers down my back as they pressed against my 
cheeks, my neck, penetrated to my breast through 
my blouse. We fought. Oh, how we fought. 
— You little fool. . . . Kiss me. . . . You damned 
little flirt. . . . I’m . . . going to . . . have you. 
. . . The coarse hair of his cheek scraping my 
skin; one of his arms clutching me around the 
waist against him; the other feeling its way down 
my body as I struggled to stop it. I tore loose 
from him. Frantic despair broke me loose. I 
vaguely knew my blouse was ripped. I rushed 
upstairs. I locked the door. First the trunk; 
then chair; and table. Afraid to turn on the 
light — afraid to go to bed. Standing in the black 
center of my room with every muscle and nerve 
drawn and trembling and only expelling my 
breath when I could hold it no longer. Why, I 
wonder, didn’t I scream when he took hold of 
me? Why did I not call some one afterward? 
Shame ? I wonder. How long did I stand there ? 
It must have been a long time. I lay down on 
the bed without undressing, listening to the beat¬ 
ing of my heart. And gradually — good heavens, 

[139] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

how clearly I can remember that curious, baffling 
feeling — and how often I’ve thought of it since: 
fear slowly giving way to that — that what? 
That — that queer sensual craving. Vague — un¬ 
defined-uncomfortable. A restless longing. I 
hated Tommie. I loathed and despised him. I 
shuddered every time he passed back or forth 
through my chaotic nightmare. But — I wanted 
suddenly to be loved. It burst over me with the 
shock of a cold shower. I gasped and shivered. 
And my imagination took hold of the idea and 
flew in circles with it, disappeared, and back 
again. I got up and stripped off my clothes, stand¬ 
ing and shivering beside the bed in the dark and 
crawled quickly under the covers, cuddled there 
in a knot, neither thinking nor dreaming. Yet 
a thousand pictures whirling at a terrific speed 
before me. I can recall it so plainly. As if I 
had actually stood by and watched and seen my 
mind jump through hoops. It’s so clear to me 
now. And Gordon. I remember that. One min¬ 
ute — or was it second ? — I draw back in dis¬ 
gust from the touch of Tommie and the next I 
was reaching out my arms to Gordon. What a 
peculiar thing. I don’t believe that Gordon had 
ever entered my mind in that guise before. I’m 
sure he hadn’t. I had thought of him. Yes, I 
know I had. But only vaguely and in that stupid 

[140] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

romantic way I had. That’s awfully funny; I 
had never thought — well, I’ll be darned! That’s 
the very first time I ever dreamed of Gordon as 
my love. I’m sure of it; as sure of it as anything 
in the world. I’ll bet anything that’s when it all 
started. Because I know how I fought against 
those things before and what a dreadful beast I 
was for even having to struggle against them. 
But why — why did I give up so suddenly to 
dreams of Gordon ? And at such a time P Fright¬ 
ened out of my wits — feverish. This terrified 
loathing and shrinking and fear turned in a 
second to an exquisite, overwhelming sensation 
that was almost an ecstasy. All night. And to¬ 
wards morning I lay straight and still. As de¬ 
liberately as a machine I held the picture of Gor¬ 
don before me, staring into the darkness with 
wide open eyes, seeing myself and Gordon to¬ 
gether. I stand in the center of a lovely bedroom 
all lavender and pinks. Low, soft lights cast a 
suffused glow. He steps forward, gently lifts me, 
carries me without effort to the chaise longue, 
and abandons me to its cushioned depths. He 
kneels at my side and caresses my hand with his 
slender, beautiful fingers. Slowly he leans to¬ 
ward me. His lips find my neck. My chin. My 
cheeks. My mouth. My hands reach for his and 
remain there. He is fumbling with the top hook 

[141] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

of my negligee. I offer no resistance. His move¬ 
ment is awkward. His head is pressed against 
my breast. Such beautiful, painful torture . . . 
delicious torture. 

Oh — oh. Yes. That was the beginning I’m 
sure. I had never dreamed of any man that way 
before. And I was deep into it before I realized 
what I was doing. I looked forward to these 
dreams as something precious, anxious to get 
home and be alone where I could close my eyes 
and fall into delicious reveries. Before I realized. 
Always Gordon. And they grew and grew. I 
couldn’t stop them. When I tried to stop them I 
couldn’t. When black days came they were my 
refuge. They became another life. And yet I 
could see that; I could see what they were doing 
to me. Then why didn’t I stop them? Let’s see. 
If I know the origin of them now that ought 
to make it easy to end them. If you find the be¬ 
ginning of these things you ought to be able to 
bring it all out in the daylight and discard it 
for good. But I’ve always recalled that night, and 
it seems to make no difference. I wanted him 
anyway. I — I don’t know. Perhaps that’s not it 
after all. No. I don’t know what it is. I’ve never 
tried to forget that night; I’ve thought of it many, 
many times. But why should Gordon have re¬ 
turned to me so vividly? Why does he keep re- 

[ J 42] 


ONE-TWO — THREE — FOUR 

turning ? And keep returning ? Why did I 
have this silly feeling that life would be impos¬ 
sible without him? And yet it seemed to make 
little difference whether in the flesh or not. The 
Gordon of my imagination was not the same 
Gordon that I bumped into on Fifth Avenue that 
wet afternoon. They have become fused. I can’t 
tear them apart. But I know I was surprised 
when I first talked to him. I could have gone 
on indefinitely with the Gordon I had created; 
I could never have given him up. I wanted to; 
but I couldn’t. How many times have I resolved 
bitterly to throw his image out of my life, to 
start my mind along new paths ? In the clear light 
of the day — yes. But at night in the dark lone¬ 
someness of my room he hovers over me until I 
give myself up to him. I, the hater of marriage, 
couldn’t give myself up! Bah! But I’m no worse 
than every one else. All the people I’ve ever 
known are always talking and thinking one thing 
and doing just the opposite. And they talk and 
talk. And preach and preach. How many really 
mean what they say? They think they do, but 
they don’t. All they’re trying to do is to sell 
themselves. For what? Sell. Sell. Sell. I’m not 
what I am. But I’ll sell you what I am anyway. 
Cor die does as an excuse for a lover. Tommie did 
it as an excuse for failure. J. P. does it as an 

[143] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

excuse for chasing dollars. And Gordon — he 
sells his emotions. What else? What person 
have I met yet who isn’t posing to hide some¬ 
thing? Or to obtain something? I’m like this 
— or — this is what I feel about such things — 
or — I think so and so.— Selling. The age of 
selling we ought to call it. Selling ourselves 
to ourselves and to each other. J. P. thinks it’s 
wonderful. —The greatest little game in the 
world — this selling. There’s a real kick to bring¬ 
ing a hard nut to terms. You walk into a pros¬ 
pect’s office knowing that he’s all set to fight 
every argument you bring up. He’s sitting back 
in his swivel chair waiting, planning how he 
can turn you dovyn. He’s a smart man; he’s been 
up against a great many hard-boiled salesmen. 
The depression has made him tougher than ever. 
It’s like playing a game of chess with big stakes. 
You try to figure out his line of thought and an¬ 
ticipate him. He’s trying to get your number too. 
And you have it out. Yes, sir, it’s a great game. 
It’s not only in business. Politics is just the same. 
Writers; architects; actors; preachers; even doc¬ 
tors and lawyers these days — they are all sell¬ 
ing themselves like mad. They’ve got to do it. 
Competition will knock them in the eye if they 
don’t. And it’s a splendid thing too; for old man 
competition makes the world go around. That’s 

[144] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

why we are the most progressive people living: 
we put everything on a competitive basis and 
fight it out. Yes, sir, it’s a great game.— 

I suppose it is. I suppose every word he utters 
is a part of his selling talk. How entirely dif¬ 
ferent he is from Gordon. And yet — yet I was 
willing to v/ork for him; to see him in the office 
each day; finally to go out with him evenings 
and — Cordie and Willa thought it was fine. 
They would. They’re practical. —I’m living in 
this world — here and now, — Cordie said,— 
and I want to get out of it every little drop of 
happiness I can. And, believe me, money is not 
beyond my calculations if I see it hanging around 
within my reach. I’d give up Johnnie to-morrow 
— and he’s a wonderful lover — if I had the 
chance to marry a man who had sufficient money 
for me to travel and see the things of this world 
that are just waiting for me to look them over. 
Don’t be so absurd, Chlo. J. P.’s better than any 
of that acting and writing bunch you used to go 
with when you were doing press-agent stuff. 
J. P. is falling for you hard. And you had better 
snatch the chance. You’re getting morbid. I 
wish to goodness you’d let me psych you. You’ve 
got something rotting inside your head that needs 
the air. But never mind — if you keep up this 
coldness and reserve J. P. is going to let you go. 

[145] 



ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

A man might fall for that stuff for a while but 
he’ll soon tire of it. — 

Coldness and reserve. If she only knew. That’s 
stupid. She does know. She’s known ever since 
we first talked together. That’s why she insisted 
that I should share the apartment with her and 
Willa. She’s trying to dig down to the bottom 
of me all the while. And it’s been so horribly 
embarrassing. I’ve wanted to confide in her and 
I couldn’t. I love her enough to tell her any¬ 
thing— yet I couldn’t; I couldn’t tell her all the 
detestable thoughts and dreams that arise and 
attack me. What good would it do? Well, she 
would have understood, and that might have 
helped. Why didn’t I? The talks we have had. 
When she used to curl up on the foot of my 
bed and lecture me. She’s an angel. Even if 
she is big and boisterous and has such awful taste 
in hats and clothes, she’s a perfect angel. 

— Chlo — I’m terribly fond of you. But I can’t 
quite make you out sometimes. What are you 
getting out of life? What are you trying to get 
out of it? We simply have to drag you out to 
get you to play in the evening. The men who 
take you out all seem to bore you more or less. 
And you never let yourself go; you’re always 
so tense and reserved. You read too much and 
you skip around so you never seem to get any- 

[ 146] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

where with it. And yet you’ve got plenty of 
bean. Forgive me, dear, but I can’t help but 
notice these things. And I’m so fond of you it 
really worries me. You seem to be drawing in on 
yourself more and more. It’s not healthy. Won’t 
you tell me what it is, Chlo? Maybe old Cordie 
can help a little. Now what is it all about, 
dear ? — 

Cordie is a peach. 

— Nothing is the matter, Cordie. I’m just 
born that way I guess. I’m shy of course. But 
I get happiness out of life, only I haven’t a very 
playful disposition. I enjoy my work; I like 
to read; I like to go to a good show. Just be¬ 
cause I don’t kick up my heels more is no sign — 

— Now, Chlo, that’s not sporting. You know 
you’re not telling the truth. Honestly, what are 
you trying to get out of life? Where do you 
think you are bound? You’re certainly unhappy 
right now about something.— 

— No, truly, Cordie, I’m not unhappy really. 
Oh, I am unhappy I suppose. I don’t know why. 
Life seems to me rather stupid; it has for an aw¬ 
fully long time. I think it always has. Every 
one rushing and fighting so hard about nothing; 
taking themselves so seriously. And the men you 
talk about: they only have two subjects of con¬ 
versation, and both are worn out. Themselves 

[147] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

and their business and themselves and love. Isn’t 
there anything left in the world but business 
and book talk and love making ? — 

— But, my dear, you are the one taking things 
seriously. Not these people you speak of. You 
mustn’t talk like that. You’ll have me thinking 
you’ve lost your sense of humor completely. Tell 
me — do you believe in a God ? — 

— No. I don’t think so. I can’t bring myself 
to believe there is some single, all-powerful in¬ 
telligence that’s either over us or a part of us. 
The whole idea I think is a sort of club to 
threaten igno— 

— I know what you mean. But why do you 
feel so down on marriage ? — 

— Why? Because I think it’s stupefying and 
stultifying. Because it’s so dreadfully unfair. 
What chance has a woman if she once gets tied 
down to a home and raising children ? Think of 
the married women you know? — how many of 
them ever escape the monotonous treadmill once 
they’re caught? I’ll keep my freedom, thank 
you. I’d rather be my own mistress than strug¬ 
gle for future generations. Don’t you agree with 
me? — 

— Well, of course I don’t think you have to 
have children if you don’t wish to. I don’t want 
any now, but I do believe sooner or later every 

[148] 


ONE — TWO —THREE — FOUR 

woman wants children. It’s a part of old nature. 
I think I will some time and I think you will 
some day too. But if you’re so down on marriage 
and have no moral scruples, why don’t you have 
a lover ? You ought to do something, Chlo. Either 
you ought to get married or take a lover, one of 
the two. Please forgive me for being so brutally 
frank about it, but to my cock-eyed glance it 
looks as if you have gone a pretty long time 
bucking against realities, and I think it’s plain 
downright unhealthy. Don’t you ever feel the 
desire . . . the need of a man ? — 

— No. That is, I don’t think about it; I keep 
my mind off it. You’re being absurd, Cordie. 
There’s not a thing in the world the matter with 
me. I’m quiet of course. But — but — oh, let’s 
talk of something else, please, Cordie dear.— 
But I lied. Probably she knew I lied. Even 
while we talked, Gordon was flashing back and 
forth across my mind until I was afraid I would 
call his name. I was so determined that I would 
not and could not give away such a secret that I 
was sure that I would blurt out his name in spite 
of myself. Did I want a lover? How many, 
many times I’ve thought I did. Yes, Cordie is 
right. I will check this unhealthy mood before 
it’s too late, I said to myself. I will give myself 
to Dean. Cordie is right. It is the normal, the 

[149] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

healthy thing to do. Dean is sympathetic; he is 
gentle; he is understanding. Yes, I will become 
his mistress, I decide firmly. I say to myself as I 
have so often said, see this through; don’t be a 
prude now. You are fond of him and he says he 
adores you; you need him badly. Back and forth 
I argue. We sit at tea and I study him; his high 
intellectual forehead, his long slightly bony neck, 
tight dry skin. Unintentionally I revolt. I com¬ 
pare. My image intervenes. No. No. I cannot 
love Dean. Not this writing machine. I can’t 
bear to think of him this way. And suddenly I 
am physically tired and bored. He talks of plots 
and characters and books, and life becomes futile. 
Galsworthy and Wells and Walpole and Huxley 
versus Dreiser and Cather and Lewis and Hem- 
mingway. England versus America. On and on. 

— There is no great difference between the 
English and American novelist to-day. Each 
country has the equivalent of the other. The 
reviewers create the difference. Book reviewing 
has developed into one of the most vicious habits 
we have in this country. One newspaper finds 
it produces profitable advertising and all the 
others take it up. So they have to hire amateurs 
to fill space — these adjective hounds with their 
'devastating’ and ‘vivid’ and ‘compelling’ and 
‘enormous’ and ‘unswerving’ — good Lord, do 

[150] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

you know what one little beggar said of my Cup 
of Froth? He said, it is vital and breathes of life, 
but lacks that deftness, that skilful shading of 
nuances in the choice of words, a lack which so 
often relieves American novels of the vivid qual¬ 
ities that should be theirs by right! Tripe! If 
that chap knew that I once spent two solid hours 
to find one word, just one word, he’d sing a dif¬ 
ferent tune. Now, if an Englishman had written 
it. . . . 

He is thinking of his writing, not of me. He 
will always think of his writing. As writing. 
His emotions were weighings and comparings. 
Exhausted on styles. I study him. I can love his 
mind, perhaps, not his body. Not his dry, thin 
neck. I turn back to my image of Gordon. Al¬ 
ways on the verge of the cliff I stand, always 
shrinking back, shifting from reality to my — 
and then the dream actually turns to reality! 
And there is Gordon before me; day after day; 
within my reach. And I Want him — this reality. 
My beautiful dreams are dissolved into thin vapors 
before the stinging desire for him in the flesh. 
He is so — so beautiful. And — I can see only 
bleak blank days without him. And then! Great 
God, what a joke. What a miserable joke it has 
all been. To find I couldn’t give myself without 
marriage; in spite of all my talk, all my deter- 

[i5i] 


% 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

mination, I must have marriage. Well — I’ve 
received what was coming to me I suppose. But 
I couldn’t see it when Gordon first came within 
my horizon again. I always see too late. I must 
have marriage; he haH to marry me. What ter¬ 
rible days and nights those were, from the mo¬ 
ment I left his studio with all my pride trampled 
under his feet. To ask a man to marry me; then 
to be gently scolded as if I were a child. To 
murder my proposal with the same words I had 
used to kill his so many years before that I might 
have forgotten I had said them. What utter 
humiliation! And yet even my humiliation could 
not down my — my what ? My desire, I suppose. 
I must have him, I thought. I repeated it to my¬ 
self, I must have him. I can’t do without him; 
he’s got to marry me; I’ll make him marry me; 
I’ll make him do it. He’s lying. I know he’s 
lying. A pose — just another pose. He’s lying. 
If he loves me he’ll marry me in the end. I’ll make 
him marry me. He can’t help it. He’s just talk¬ 
ing — as I was talking. I’ll make him do it. I’ll 
make him. 


[ J 52] 


9 


Chlo gave a slight convulsive jer\ as if to 
ward of a blow, and then lay still and quiet. 

That nightmare of a night. How did I ever 
manage to leave Gordon’s studio and reach home ? 
I was only conscious of shame, nauseating shame 
that sickened me. I had proposed to a man and 
he had coolly turned me down, gently upbraided 
me as though I had been a hysterical child, bar¬ 
gained for my body as one might bid at an auc¬ 
tion. These were the thoughts that assailed me. 
I had thrown myself at his feet and groveled and 
he had in effect patted my head and said, there, 
there, my child we mustn’t be absurd; here’s 
what we will do, little girl. The sudden cutting 

[153] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

thought that he was deliberately getting back 
at me for the calm way I had turned him down 
ten years before, then the thought that he was 
sitting back in his studio laughing at me, or per¬ 
haps sneering at me for a prude. How could I 
have thrown my pride away and begged and 
cried for a man to marry me? How could I? 
How could I? All night this horrible question 
intruded. I could never see him again; I would 
never be able to look him in the face. But what 
difference, after all, did it make, I wearily asked 
myself. I would never see him again anyway. He 
did not want to see me now. Certainly I would 
not want to see him. I would go away. Leave 
New York. I would slip quietly off to some small 
town and live alone. Secluded and mysterious. 
I would remain aloof from the world and its pet¬ 
tiness. But I had so very little money saved. Ah, 
well, I would write. I knew life now. A new 
genius before whom the far-away world would 
humbly bow. And I saw Cezanne tramping alone 
through the fields and hills surrounding Aix, 
misunderstood and despised, painting his way to 
future glory. Then I recalled what Gordon had 
told me of Cezanne and his bitter life — the 
recollection shattered my dream of genius. The 
present wias back staring me in the face. I sat 
up in bed and tried to make myself go over in 

[154] 


ONE —TWO —THREE —FOUR 

logical order all we had said and done that eve¬ 
ning. It was impossible. I could only see I had 
been a tremendous fool. I had made it impossible 
for myself to go back to him now under any 
conditions. Pride forbade me. But why should 
I have worried about pride? I had been honest. 
Had Gordon? Had he really meant what he 
said? A quick suspicion assailed me. What a 
shock that was. Perhaps he was merely bluffing. 
The idea hit me full in the face. Very well, if 
he was like that I’d soon show him. No man 
in this wiorld could experiment with me as if I 
were some chemical to be poured from one re¬ 
tort into another. I was through. I would never 
see him again no matter what amends he tried 
to make. If he had really loved me he would 
not have let me go on talking. He would have 
interrupted. He would have asked me to marry 
him without leading me on to ask him. 

I remember how I repeated over and over: I 
wouldn’t see him or talk to him if he dragged 
himself on his knees to my doorstep. I was indig¬ 
nant. Oh, what a horrible beast, I decided, he was. 
Like all other men, I thought; they’re all the 
same, egotists; I shall never have anything to do 
with any man again. But in the midst of my 
scorn, and before I realized it, I was living over 
again our first evening in his studio. He stood 

[i55] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

pressing me to him. ... I was beating my arms 
wildly ... his face against mine . . . beautiful 
pain . . . exquisite pain . . . why, why didn’t — 
oh dear, I mustn’t think of that. I lived it over in 
a passing second and a great feeling of renuncia¬ 
tion lifted me. I was happy in my surge of un¬ 
happiness. My principles had stood firm against 
his — his onslaughts. I had the feeling that I 
had done something big and great and noble. 
The moral heroism of my own action raised a 
lump of tearful admiration in my throat. 

Renunciation! How graciously a mood assumes 
a lie to save our tottering self-respect. Did I not 
know in the bottom of my heart that I had not 
renounced Gordon? Would I not have given my 
right hand for the courage to throw myself into 
his arms and have him take me as he would? 
Never mind. Lie or no lie, I’m glad it gave me 
some relief from the torturing knowledge of 
what a fool I had been. It made it easier to drag 
myself from bed in the morning and face Cordie 
and Willa. Even so I dreaded that ordeal. I 
was sure that the whole of the evening was writ¬ 
ten in my face. 

— You must have come in awfully late last 
night. — 

— Yes. — 

— I was late myself but I must have been dead 

[ 156] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

to the world when you came in. What time was 

it? — 

— I’m not sure.— 

— Show any good ? — 

— All right. 

— Say, Chlo, you look all dragged out this 
morning. Why don’t you take the day off and 
put in a good sleep and rest? I’ll tell }. P. for 
you. — 

— No, I’m all right. Truly. — 

I thought I caught a glance passing between 
the two. I wasn’t sure. But I was furious; I 
boiled with resentment. Later they would talk 
about me. What right had they to pry into my 
affairs? It was no one’s business if I felt seedy, 
if I had stayed out late and was tired. I had no 
appetite but sat at the table nursing my resent¬ 
ment until Cordie got up. I couldn’t bear to 
leave the two together. I was afraid they would 
start discussing me. Every word seemed to have 
a hidden meaning. My imagination was distort¬ 
ing; I felt that they were slyly watching and 
studying me. It grew almost unbearable. Willa 
munching, munching toast with a steady rhythm 
that to my overdrawn nerves was a deliberate in¬ 
solence. A calculated desire to irritate me. I 
wanted to scream. Anything to break this munchy 
silence. I was relieved when Cordie finally 

[ 157] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

jumped up and rushed into her coat and hat. 
I joined her and we set out for the office. She 
talked inconsequentially and steadily and I an¬ 
swered in monosyllables. I remember so plainly. 
I knew that she knew something had horribly 
upset me and I knew she was being flip and 
casual on purpose. The knowledge angered me 
and fed my resentment. I’m going off somewhere 
to live alone, I said to myself sullenly. I’m going 
to find a place where I can be myself when I 
want to. How often I’ve thought of that. When 
I’m rushing around and seeing a lot of people 
I think how wonderful it would be to be alone, 
to read and study and think. Then when I get 
alone I have the feeling that I am forgotten, lost 
and out of the world. I want to be back with 
people even more than I wanted to escape them. 
Oh, dear, what is the answer? I had made up 
my mind that I was finished with Gordon for¬ 
ever. I hated him. I would put him out of my 
life. 

Yet the instant my phone rang that morning, 
great heavens, how my heart jumped. I hesi¬ 
tated to take off the receiver. Yet I was expecting 
this call. In spite of my bitter shame and all my 
resolutions I actually believe that behind my rav¬ 
ing stood the hope that he would. And yet I 
was unprepared. Unprepared and bewildered. 

[158] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Immediately I heard his voice I had an insane 
desire to hang up the receiver and run. But I 
couldn’t. I couldn’t release the phone; I couldn’t 
resist answering. Against my will, I admitted it 
was I speaking. 

— Chlo, please tell me you’re not angry.— 

— Angry? I? Of course not, Gordon. Why 
should I be angry ? — Why did I give such an ab¬ 
surd answer? Beating around the bush like a 
child of sixteen. But my voice must have belied 
my words. Of course it did. I had difficulty in 
controlling it. And I could read anxiety in his 
reply. 

— You’re sure, Chlo? I was a brute. You — 
you’re perfectly sure ? — 

— I tell you I am not angry. I was a simple 
idiot. I should be the one to apologize. It Was 
just the show or something. I was a bit over¬ 
wrought, that was all. I can see your point of 
view. Everything is perfectly all right. Please, 
Gordon. I’d rather forget it all. — 

— All right, Chlo, if you’re sure. Only — I do 
want to apologize for the way I spoiled your 
evening. Won’t you let me see you this evening. 
I have so much I want to tell you. Will you, 
Chlo? Let’s go to the Colony for dinner.— 

— No, Gordon, I’m sorry. I can’t.— 

— To-morrow then ? — 

[ 159 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

— No, Gordon. Not to-morrow either.— 

— When, Chlo? — 

— Never. — 

— Why Chlo, I — I — what — I thought you 
said you weren’t angry.— 

Stupid fool! Oh, how furious he made me. 
How dared he say that! 

— I said I was not angry, Gordon, and I meant 
it. I have simply thought the whole thing over 
and it’s just impossible to go on this way. That’s 
all there is to it. I angry ? Don’t be ridiculous. I 
merely consider it time to stop. So I don’t think 
we had better see each other any more. Good 
bye.— 

I rang off before he had the chance to answer. 
But what a curious reaction. Depressed and ex¬ 
hilarated; exhilarated and depressed. Neither 
the one nor the other. Both. He loved me. He 
was afraid he had hurt me. But no. He still 
thought he could have things his way. He still 
thought I would give in. No. No. No. He 
truly loved me. Whether he wanted to marry me 
or not he loved me. Ah, yes. I was sure of that. 
Nothing now could rob me of that belief. If I 
did anything during the rest of the day I don’t 
know what it was. I returned over and over 
to our conversation over the phone; I strove to 
recall each word he had spoken; I tried to re- 

[160] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

member his accentuations; I repeated his sentences 
and sought hidden meanings behind them. It 
was a monotonous job from which I was unable 
to refrain. The attempt to construct the state of 
mind behind his wiords was exhausting. As fast 
as I reached a conclusion I decided it was wrong 
and discarded it. Rehashing conversations. I do 
it so often. Now what was behind this remark 
and what was meant by that? It’s such a useless 
habit. I wish I could stop it. But certainly any 
one would have been upset after what I had 
been through that night. I’m too quick to blame 
myself, anyway: making mountains out of mole 
hills. Why shouldn’t I have been upset? I won¬ 
der what I should have done if J. P. hadn’t 
stepped into the picture at such a psychological 
moment. Things would have turned out very 
differently, I’ll bet that. I wish I had never seen 
him that day. I wish — but what’s the use of 
wishing — it’s too late now. But when it came 
then — nothing less than an inspiration, I thought 
then. 

The irony of it. A queer kind of inspiration 
J. P. gave me. More the dream of a romantic 
school girl than the inspiration of a grown 
woman. But when we met in the elevator and 
he insisted on walking home with me, the idea 
came as a stroke of genius. Why not use J. P. 

[ 161 ] 


ONE —TWO —THREE-FOUR 

as a whip on Gordon. Oh, ho! Here was an idea. 
Here was the way to make Gordon marry me. 
I wouldn’t let him see me or come near me. 
But — J. P. complained so bitterly because I gave 
him so few engagements — all right — I would 
give him all the evenings he wished until he was 
fairly sick of them. He could have any evening 
only — how clever I thought I was being — I was 
to decide where we were to eat or dance or what 
shows we were to see. Oh, yes, I was clever. 
Puh! An unhatched egg is what I really was. 
But gracious, I was delighted; I was elated. The 
air tasted good. The very noise of the street was 
buoyant. I would make J. P. take me to dinner 
at Gordon’s favorite eating places; I would sweep 
in on J. P.’s arm absorbed in his conversation, 
unaware of the stares Gordon would give; I would 
sit through dinner intent on every word J. P. 
uttered, unconscious of Gordon and the room 
around me; I would do it night after night. I 
would hound Gordon — I would ignore him. 
That would make him jealous; that would soon 
bring him to terms. Yes. I walked home with 
J. P. with joy in my heart. Everything now looked 
so easy and simple. I would teach Gordon a les¬ 
son. As we strolled homeward, for the first time I 
felt a quick fondness for J. P. I listened with 
new ears to what he was saying. His words fitted 

[162] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

my mood. A former time and I would have said, 
Babbitt. But now they rang true and full. I 
listened gleefully as I toyed with my new plan. 

— By George, Miss Harding, this has been a 
great day. I think I’ve just about got that Wilson 
& Snyder contract. It’s been tough pulling but 
I got under their skins to-day. Snyder came right 
out at the meeting and shot at me, “Well, how 
would you sell our soap then?” Trying to lead 
me on, you see. But no sir, I was waiting for that 
question. Mr. Snyder, I came back quickly, I 
have absolutely no idea. He wasn’t expecting an 
answer like that and it — er — took him back a 
bit. “Well, well,” he said trying to be sarcastic, 
“after talking with us for the last two months 
you haven’t any ideas yet; two agencies have 
already given us complete advertising plans for 
the year, and a third has given us an analysis; 
but you have nothing to offer except — er — your 
reputation — is that it?” Well, that was just what 
I was waiting for. I leaned over the table and 
looked him squarely in the eye and I spoke very 
slowly. 

No, sir, that is not it. Not by a long shot. 
Suppose you had a very sick daughter (you know, 
he has a daughter about nineteen, quite a charm¬ 
ing girl, and I was striking a soft spot), and sup¬ 
pose I was a doctor and you came to my office 

[163] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

for advice, and then suppose I w;rote out a — er — 
prescription and some rules without ever going 
to see and examine the patient, would you take 
my advice? Would you trust your daughter to 
such a doctor? Frankly now, would you sir? 
Then I waited a moment and hit the table with 
my list. 

No sir, you would not! You’d go to a special¬ 
ist and you’d expect him to make a thorough 
examination before he started prescribing any¬ 
thing. That’s what you’d do, sir. Am I right? I 
stopped there. It’s — er — a great thing to know 
when to shut up. I didn’t say another word. Let 
that sink in, I said to myself. And by George, it 
did. Old Wilson w&s there, you know, and after 
a while he began nodding his head. 

“That’s horse sense, Snyder, you can’t get away 
from that; it’s good hard horse sense.” 

Well, I think I cinched it. I think we’ve got 
the account. — It’s a great game, this advertising, 
Miss Harding; it’s er — more representative of 
our age and times than anything I know. The 
speed, the power, the gigantic scale on which it 
puts business; the way it keys up our lives, sets 
us a pace to go through life. A lot of people try 
to sneer at it and say it’s a lot of tricks — that it 
oversold the country and even was the cause of 
the depression. But by George, when you think 

[164] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

of how it’s freed working people from stagnation 
and set new, standards of living and brought 
every kind of necessity and even luxury into the 
homes of almost every one. Yes, sir, and look 
at these buildings around us: the tremendous size 
of them. Yet — they get all their meaning, all 
their — er — real beauty, if you know what I 
mean, from the human beings that fill them and 
pour in and out. Why, the Radio City buildings 
alone hold a city of people. Think of it. It’s — 
why it’s almost beyond imagination, the big off¬ 
hand way we do things to-day. And look at 
these crowds pouring down the street, the noise 
and rush and bustle. By George, Miss Harding, 
this is civilization. It’s the first time the world 
has ever been really alive. Noise and rush is life. 
What else is there to it? To keep going, moving, 
struggling ... by George. . . . 

I recalled the poignant quiet of the Sunday 
afternoons Gordon and I had spent in strolling 
through deserted lower New York. But they 
shone vaguely as through a far distant past. Yes, 
these streets were vivid and alive and the noise 
and great buildings seemed to have definite, con¬ 
crete meaning. I had a sensation of grasping this 
meaning. But only for a second. I tried to catch 
and hold it. For an instant Gordon flashed 
through my mind as a pathetic child. His so- 

[165] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

phistication was a tissue-paper suit of armor. 
But I looked again. The meaning had fled. There 
was only a huge crowd of tired men and women 
walking at breakneck speed; only a noise of 
whistles and motor horns; only piles of stone 
that darkened the streets before the sun was 
down. I could see Gordon serene and unmoved 
in his ascetic studio, tall, burnt-orange walls 
broken only by the brilliantly colored Bathers . 
Sanity. I wanted him sharply. And I hugged 
my idea to my breast and nursed it. 

When I think — what an absurdly funny two 
weeks I spent. And how funny it must have been 
to J. P. Letting me drag him night after night 
to restaurants he must have loathed. But he was 
a good sport about it. I can see that disgusted 
expression when I named some place he particu¬ 
larly disliked. —Well, by George, Chlo, I can’t 
quite understand your taste in these matters. 
You know it’s no real fun to eat in these crowded, 
smoky little rooms. And everybody in the place 
looks queer. And that Colony — it tries to be so 
high-hat and it’s so deadly quiet. Can’t we go 
to the Ritz or Pierre’s just for one night? — But 
he always gave in. And after all the nasty things 
he says about highbrow shows, how; I must have 
made him suffer. He is wonderfully good at bot¬ 
tom; much too good for me. Why must he get 

[166] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

on my nerves so terribly? Why do I find him 
so physically repulsive? He’s successful. And 
popular. Other women like him tremendously. 
Oh, well — there it is and I can’t help it. He’s 
so — so. . . . 

The first evening that we ran into Gordon at 
dinner I was startled, although I had been delib¬ 
erately making J. P. take me to every restaurant 
Gordon liked — one after another. I knew how I 
would act, didn’t I? I would sweep by care¬ 
lessly, indifferently. A distant nod as I passed; 
then forgetful of his presence; a deep interest in 
my partner; a vivacity. But gracious, I wasn’t 
expecting Gordon to act as he did. When he rose 
from his seat and stared at me. It was dread¬ 
fully stupid of me to stop and stare back. I 
catch myself and bow slightly and walk on. He 
has on the softly rough, deep-brown suit I love 
and he has a girl with him but I am afraid to 
glance his way again. I am miserable. I have 
made a mess of things. And every time the waiter 
comes to our table I am sure it is Gordon. Instead 
of the vivacity and joy I was going to show for 
Gordon’s benefit I am nervous and absent-minded. 
I wonder who the girl is. Has he already forgot¬ 
ten me? 

I’m a logical creature! Here I was asking my¬ 
self all these foolish questions when ever since 

[167] 


ONE —TWO —THREE-FOUR 

my proposal he had been trying to phone me 
several times a day. But at least I had the pride 
to give myself a good scolding when I got home 
that night. I was a little better afterwards. I 
can’t understand now how I continued to stick 
it out; I had only one purpose in me — he had 
to marry me. And I was living, living on this 
despairing hope that he would want me so much 
he would finally give in and propose. How could 
that have been me ? But it was. I don’t see how 
J. P. stood me. I could not help but become sar¬ 
castic with him; my nerves stayed on edge. 
Two whole weeks of this. Blocking J. P.’s at¬ 
tempts at proposals; waiting for something to 
happen — I did not know what. It’s a wonder 
I didn’t go mad. And then that night in the 
Colony. In the quiet restful grays of the Colony, 
of all places. No. It was natural if it was to 
happen anywhere. But why did I do it? Why? 
It seems so utterly impossible now. So utterly, 
utterly impossible. Why, why, why did I do it? 


[168] 


10 


Chlo was still lying quietly on her bac\ as 
though in a deeply restful sleep, save that a 
slight frown ploughed its narrow furrow of 
concentration between her wide-open, un¬ 
seeing eyes. The slow beat of a scarcely 
audible snore from the next bed gently pene¬ 
trated the dar\ silence of the room. 

I was so weary that night, so weary and de¬ 
pressed with my fruitless chase. A lifetime pris¬ 
oner, I imagine, must pace up and down in his 
narrow cell in much the same despondent and 
stubborn haze that enwrapped me when I en¬ 
tered the Colony with J. P. It might have been 

[i6 9 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

last night. So many times in that past three weeks 
had we encountered Gordon — I was unnerved at 
the thought of bovying to him again. These 
forced encounters suddenly become a monstrous 
stupidity; they must be so obvious — so dread¬ 
fully crude. At the last moment I rebuke myself 
bitterly for going there. I can’t bow to him; I 
am sure my legs will refuse to move when I 
reach the door. This has gone too far. I glance 
hastily through the door. Of course Gordon 
would be there. What a temptation it is to rush 
out, to make J. P. take me far away from this 
place. I enter the ladies’ room and make a pre¬ 
tense of rouging and powdering my face. A 
subterfuge to give me time to fight, to restore my 
poise. A clear beam of reason has penetrated the 
fog of emotion that has been driving me eve¬ 
ning after evening in search of Gordon, the clear 
light that flashes for a second and is gone as I 
try to grasp it. If it could only endure; but it 
goes as it comes, and stupefies. I am unnerved at 
the thought of sitting in this room where Gor¬ 
don is. How serious and tired my face in the 
mirror. Surely nothing in life can be as serious 
as the story my face tells in the mirror. —I’m 
sorry I kept you waiting so long J. P. — 

Yes, Gordon is there with a girl. What is she 
like? I cannot see. I dare not look. I dare not 

[170] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

turn my head to speak for fear I cannot turn it 
back. Horrid thought. And so the waiter must 
seat us in an alcove directly opposite Gordon 
and his girl. Is she a model, I wonder? Thank 
goodness, we sit profile and not full face, that, 
at least, is a relief. 

— What did you say, J. P.? I beg your par¬ 
don for not listening — you order for me this eve¬ 
ning. I’m always envious of what you order for 
yourself — it usually looks so much more tempt¬ 
ing than mine when it comes; I’ll take whatever 
you take this time. 

The front of my head feels tight as if some 
one were pulling from each side. I hope J. P. 
doesn’t propose or insist on talking advertising 
and codes this evening. If he does either I’ll 
scream. I’m weary of hearing business and pol¬ 
itics. I’m weary of running after Gordon; I’m 
weary of J. P. and his proposals. I wish I were 
home. No I don’t. J. P. is comfortable, like old 
bedroom slippers. I don’t have to talk to him if 
I don’t wdsh; he’ll talk. Heaven knows he’ll 
not run out of words. Words and a hearty 
handshake are his capital. What is he saying? I 
must keep my mind off Gordon. I feel as if his 
eyes are completely fastened on me. Is he really 
looking at me or do I just think it? What is 
J. P. saying? He’s been awfully sweet to me 

[171] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

after the way I treat him. I can’t help it. He is 
so eternally sure of himself. But yet he’s decent 
in lots of ways. If only he were not so Babbitty 
and his skin were not — Gordon and his smooth 

•V 

white — oh, dear! 

— Chlo! Have you gone deaf or have you 
found a more interesting world of your own ? — 

— No, please, J. P., I’m all ears. Your words 
shall be engraved on my heart. Now what did 
you say? 

— Nothing. It was really nothing. But, Chlo, 
I should like to ask you a question if you don’t 
mind. — 

— Of course not. What is it ? — 

My reply is apathetic. I am not interested in 
anything he may say. I watch his thick muscular 
fingers as they fumble for a match, the little 
tufts of hair on the backs. Then I glance at his 
face curiously. His olive-red face spotted with 
its thick closely clipped moustache. A moustache 
is not — not sanitary. It’s bound to pick up germs 
and dirt. But it does help to keep his jaw from 
looking so square. A prize-fighter’s jaw. J. P. 
does everything with a purpose; he always says 
he does. Did he grow his moustache on purpose 
to tone down his jaw ? Gordon is smooth shaven 
and his cheek curves evenly. He’s sitting across 
from us with a girl. I’m not interested in J. P. 

[172] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

He bores me. He ought not to stand for me 
treating him as I do; I have no use for a man 
wflio lets a woman make a fool of him. He’s an 
idiot to let me drag him out just to follow Gor¬ 
don. If his purpose in this case is to marry me 
he’s sadly mistaken. But he should know by now. 
I’ve stopped him often enough, heaven knows. 
It’s mean of me to — what is this he’s saying ? 

. . . like a woman in love or with some heavy 
worry hanging over you. I don’t mean to be 
fresh, but you know how I feel towards you, 
Chlo, and I can’t help but see. Isn’t there any¬ 
thing I can do to help you? Anything at all? 
By George, I’d do anything to see a real smile 
on your face again — even if its sarcastic — as — 
er — it is so often.— 

I can feel myself redden. 

— No, thanks just the same, }. P. Your eagle 
selling eye has made a mistake. You don’t see a 
thing out of the ordinary about me. A little 
seedy perhaps. But a few weeks of writing copy 
on Delise — the rouge, madam, wafting the rosy 
charm of lovely youth — is enough to remove a 
little color from one’s cheeks.— 

— Sarcasm again. Chlo, why — 

— No, you do me an injustice. A joke. And 
a very good one I think. — 

— But seriously, Chlo, you are looking a bit 

[i73] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

tired, you know. And you’ve been absent-minded 
and — er — moody for weeks. Honestly, I think 
a trip and a rest — 

— But I don’t want a rest. I’m all right, I tell 
you. If I stay serious for a moment you either 
advise a rest or propose marriage, and I don’t 
want either. It’s been very sweet of you to take 
me out like this but — 

— But if I don’t like things as they are I can 
lump it. Is that what you mean ? — 

— That’s neither nice nor polite of you, J. P., 
and you know I didn’t intend to say anything 
of the kind. But — 

— But when all’s said and done you don’t really 
think a great deal of me, do you, Chlo? — 

— You’re acting awfully contrary this evening. 
That’s a very foolish question. Would I go out 
with you as I do if I didn’t like you ? — 

— Well, frankly, that’s what I’m trying to fig¬ 
ure out myself. I seem to bore you quite easily. 
You’re more often sarcastic with me than other¬ 
wise. In fact, I think you are just a bit con¬ 
temptuous of some of my likes and dislikes — 
as much as your — er — fastidiousness will allow 
you to be. And yet I love you deeply. In spite of 
it all I should like you to be my wife. Let’s play 
fair. Put your cards on the table and let’s have 
everything above board just once. I’ve never 

[174] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

tried to break past your limits before: tell me, 
what is it that you don’t like about me? Just this 
once. I won’t make a murmur; why am I so 
impossible as a — er — prospective husband ? — 

He has never talked this way before. What 
has come over him and what is he leading up to ? 
I have a twlinge of uneasiness. The naked fact 
that I have been using him without consideration 
strikes me forcibly. I have a twinge of remorse. 
It sets my head spinning and for an instant his 
grimly smiling eyes and set mouth with stubby 
moustache dance before me. Then anger. How 
dare he put such a question to me. All right. 
He becomes indistinct. I’m sick and tired of ev¬ 
erything. I don’t care. I’ll tell him why. If he 
wants to end it let him. Advertising and rouge 
and selling; selling. I’ll tell him why. I’ve never 
wanted to hurt any one quite so much as I do at 
this moment. 

— Do you really want to know, J. P. ? I thought 
we had settled this marriage discussion before. 
But on your head be it. Now let me see. First, 
I don’t like your type. Oh — I like you well 
enough; I think there are a great many fine things 
about you. But I don’t like what you stand for. 
You’re so unutterably typical of everything that 
makes life in this country to-day a — a — well — 
a huge cynical cosmic joke. Tell me — have you 

[175] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

ever read any of Mencken? You have? Oh! . . . 
Well — well, you know what I mean. All this 
making a god of business and false brotherhood 
and handshaking and Rotarian love songs, this 
— this talk of ideals and service — you’ve read 
Main Street and Babbitt I know. And you’ve 
laughed at them and thought how ridiculous 
they were and petty, haven’t you? But did you 
ever stop to think that you are just about like 
Babbitt yourself in many ways? You’re not so 
crude as he’s painted, more subtle and refined. 
But if I let you, you’d do nothing but talk of 
advertising, and service, and your conferences 
with clients, and what they said and what you 
said, and how you pulled the trick that took them 
in, and how the other people had fallen down on 
service, and what a wonderful product and what 
a wonderful sale it ought to have if only its 
true merits were shown to the public in the right 
way, and what a great good we are going to do 
the public by putting it in all their homes; or if 
it’s not that, it’s the new country club you think 
you’d better join to get in right with a big manu¬ 
facturer, or some talk over the radio by Mr. Ump 
on ideals to restore prosperity, or the total number 
of motor cars this year compared with 1932. If 
it’s a show you see or a book you read, the biggest 
thing in it to you is some new idea that can be 

[ 176] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

translated into advertising. And I hate the jazz 
music you rave about. It’s — it’s not music at all. 
It’s just a tricky beat and flourish — like the flour¬ 
ishes people used to put in writing when Spence¬ 
rian was the fashion when you were a kid; or like 

— like imitating a negro — using correct words 
but mispronouncing them for effect. Your admir¬ 
ation for a picture is drawn either from its senti¬ 
ment or its selling qualities. You’re just the same 
way in everything, if you want to know. We 
don’t live in the same world; and I have very 
little respect for your world. There it is. I’m 
sorry. I suppose that’s the end. I really didn’t 
mean to hurt you, but you asked me.— 

I lean back and close my eyes, glad that I have 
spoken. It has calmed and rested my nerves. 
What difference does it all make? I ask myself; 
it’s much better than that we should go on as 
we are. Now I can — 

}. P. is speaking. 

— Hurt ? Bless your heart, I’m not hurt, Chlo. 
I’m mighty glad you’ve said what you have. It 

— it simplifies things a great deal. You’ve been 
very straight-forward and honest with me. I ad¬ 
mire it in you; I respect you for it. Not many 
women would have the — er — courage to come 
out that way and say what they really think to 

[177] 


a man. 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

— You’ve put your finger right on the spot 
when you say we live in different worlds. I know 
that. I realize it as fully as you do. I’ve known 
it from the beginning; as much when I first 
asked you to marry me as I did when I tried to 
ask you again night before last. I’ve taken all 
that into consideration. For the whole question 
in my mind — er — hinges on one or two things. 
What is your world and what is mine? And 
what does each amount to? What is your world 
like and what are you getting out of it? And 
mine — what is to be got from mine? Which 
offers more in happiness? When I ask you to be 
my wife, have I anything real to offer you? It 
simplifies itself down just like an advertising plan 
— er — I’m sorry, Chlo, I take that back, I 
didn’t mean to ring in advertising. But that’s 
the whole question in a nutshell: what have I to 
offer you . . . no, please let me finish. I heard 
you through. And I’ll never bring this up again. 
I promise you. 

— Frankly, Chlo, I — er — think my world 
has yours wiped off the map, if you’ll pardon the 
phrase. And I’d like to change yours. That 
sounds presumptuous, I know. But I love you. 

I love you as much as any man ever loved a 
woman in this world. Why, I don’t know. Ev¬ 
erything about you appeals to me: Your fineness 

[178] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

and your pride; your stubbornness in what you 
think is right even though it may be against every 
convention. But something keeps you miserable. 
You’ve been battling yourself ever since I’ve 
known you. I couldn’t help but see it. And it 
hurts me to see it — to see — er — so much beauty 
tear itself to bits and suffer so. For I love you. . . . 

— Chlo, you’ve spoken very bluntly and frankly 
to me. And I’m going to do the same to you. 
Even if it ruins the slight chance I may still have 
left with you. . . . I’m not exactly a fool, you 
know. I know you haven’t been allowing me to 
see you so much lately because my company was 
so welcome. I’ve known all along you were using 
me for some purpose of your own. Never mind, 
I was willing. If I could help you, whatever it 
was, I was willing and glad. But you know, it 
just occurred to me the other night what your 
purpose might be. And after what you have 
just said I’m dead certain. Maybe it’s none of my 
business. I’m not trying to — er — pry into your 
secrets, but you’ve played with me, laughed at me, 
used me — and for once I’m going to have my 
say — whatever the consequences. I want a show¬ 
down. . . . 

— You have been leading me to restaurants and 
plays these last several weeks simply on account 
of that artist chap over there. Evidently — er — 

[179] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

pardon me again — you are in love with him. 
What you are trying to do, I don’t quite see, 
unless you’re trying to wear him down and make 
him jealous. But this I do — 

— I — I — I think you are — just about the 
most beastly man I know. It’s perfectly ghastly 
of you to say a thing like that to me. You’re a 
horrid cad. Please let go my wrist and call me 
a taxi.— 

— No. Sit down. If you try to go, Chlo, I give 
you my word I’ll make a scene. We’ve started 
this now and I’m going to see it through. . . . 
That’s better. I’m sorry and I apologize from 
the bottom of my heart. Perhaps I’m a low-down 
mutt for doing this, Chlo. But I insist on your 
hearing my side. The only excuse I have is that 
I love you. That should be enough I think. You’ve 
put me off and put me off. And now I’m going 
to talk. . . . 

— Yes, J. P., you’ll do that; no one yet has 
ever been able to stop you when you started.— 

— All right. ... I want to take you back — 
a few years, Chlo, back to the time I was in col¬ 
lege. I don’t think I ever told you, but I paid 
every penny of my way for the four years I was 
there. I’m not proud of that, but it’s an interest¬ 
ing fact, I think, because — er — both my parents 
were a bit bitter about it for a long time. They 

[ 180] 


ONE-TWO — THREE — FOUR 

figured I could have been better employed at 
some job where I was turning in a weekly en¬ 
velope to them. When I graduated they thought 
differently. They wanted me to go on to study 
law. Their ambition was awakened. A lawyer 
in the family. I couldn’t see it. I quit college. 
Do you know why, Chlo? Because I wanted to 
write. Yes, sir, I was fired to become a great 
writer. The law looked cheap to me. I felt 
about it something the way I imagine you feel 
about business and — er — selling now. Lawyers 
were nothing but clever tricksters. I’d go to 
work and support myself by any sort of job and 
write at night until I could support myself by 
my writings. I wouldn’t even go on a newspaper 
because some one had told me that it would 
corrupt one’s style. Those were great dreams I 
had, Chlo. And I was very happy over them at 
first. I was going to make the old world eat from 
my hand before I got through. . . . 

— Why did you give it up? — 

Angry? Was I in a temper a moment before? 
Not now. This is intensely interesting. }. P. of 
all men, with a secret ambition to write novels. 
Is he pulling some terrible joke on me. If he 
is — no, no, no. But he’s the last. . . . 

— Why, Chlo? That’s what I’m trying to find 
words for now. It’s rather difficult to explain. 

[181] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

A little while ago you spoke about all the ritual 
and bunk that surrounds business — Kiwanis and 
Rotary and ideals and speeches and service and 
— er — so on; and you jumped on all the things 
that most men seem to stand for to-day. Well — 
it just occurred to me one night to take stock 
of what I was trying to do. Why was I so keen 
to write? What did I have of any vital interest 
to tell the world? Not a damned thing. The 
only possible excuse I could have for writing is 
the same excuse that turns men into staunch Ki- 
wanians and Rotarians, that makes them sing at 
a get-together banquet, that makes them talk so 
strongly of ideals and service, that gives the trick¬ 
iest business man a glow of satisfaction aside 
from the money he makes in a deal. I wanted 
to express myself in some way; to — er — make 
myself stand for something; to be somebody. It’s 
a dream every young man or woman with any 
sensibilities has: to burst through the monotonous 
round of the life they see their elders going 
through; to twist life to their own ends; to stand 
out head and shoulders above conventional ties 
that bind most people down to customs that have 
lost their meaning. Yes, sir, I’ll wager that al¬ 
most every girl or boy who hasn’t, from the start, 
a strong bent towards some particular line of 
thinking or working, decides at some time or 

[ 182] 


4 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

other that he or she will be a great artist or 
writer. And sooner or later they get the decision 
knocked out of them. They have to go to work, 
to scratch for a living. Or they realize as I did, 
that, after all, there is only a handful of genius 
in a generation. The rest of these artist chaps 
and writers and musicians are just plain, every¬ 
day business men like me. But even at that very 
few men of any kind ever lose this — er — youth¬ 
ful ideal. In our office alone I bet if you could 
get at the inside of the whole staff you’d find 
that half of them still harbor the feeling that 
some day they are going to knock off and write 
America’s great novel. A feeling, probably, they 
hardly dare express to themselves. It’s this de¬ 
sire for expression that grinds out the Babbitts 
and Kiwanians and Rotarians you — er — run 
to earth so merrily. They’re not aesthetes by a 
damned sight, these men. But, by George, I think 
it would be a difficult thing to prove that the 
basic emotion back of the point of view they’re 
trying to put into their business hasn’t got quite 
a bit of the same stuff that goes into the painting 
of a picture or the writing of a book. Does that 
sound a little absurd? Probably. We are not 
used to thinking of business men as artists. But 
take the most extreme case: an accountant. That 
looks like a hard and cold proposition, doesn’t it ? 

[i8 3 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

And yet I can see how the handling of figures 
can give as great and beautiful a thrill to many 
men as the handling of brushes and paints to 
others; the thrill of harmony, balance, and per¬ 
fect logic. . . . 

— We look childish to you, do we, playing 
our games of selling and deliberately trying to 
outwit each other as we shake hands? But have 
you thought of this: that — er — the yearnings 
and desires you might have for your world may 
be equally childish? Here is this world, made 
as it is; and here w;e are made as we are. We are 
all — every damned one — just alike at bottom, 
pushed by very much the same motives. Very 
few of us ever grow up completely — which is 
probably a good thing — so we go on playing just 
as we did as children. The difference is that we 
play different games. Something new comes into 
life as we grow older: the necessity of making a 
living. The whole question is how are you going 
to play the game of life? Kick against the rules 
and worry about fair play and get sore because 
you’re losing, or are you going to jump into it 
for all you’re worth? Usually we jump into it 
— without thinking. And, by George, that’s why 
I’m so strong for jazz and the motor car and 
the radio and everything that goes with them. 
Because it’s making a better and more complete 

[184] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

sport and game of life all the time. Even the 
depression has been in many ways an adventure. 
It’s pushed boredom into the background. And 
believe me, boredom is the worst enemy this 
world has to fight. It always has been and al¬ 
ways will be. Boredom more than everything 
else combined turns the mind in on itself and 
starts trouble. 

— This world is not just what I would have it 
had I been the maker, Chlo. But being such as it 
is, there’s one thing I’m mighty glad I discov¬ 
ered: that the best way to get anything out of 
it is to be a — er — contemporary of your time. 
To live as life is being lived around you, to throw 
yourself in the midst of the maelstrom and be 
whirled around in it. And that’s my whole 
philosophy in a nutshell: be a con-tem-po-rary. 
I’d certainly rather be in the midst of things 
than hang on the outside sneering. I’ve heard 
you say you hate the noise and bustle and bang 
of things, but it’s — it’s — inspiring, I tell you, if 
you are living in your time. For then it doesn’t 
hurt your ears — you’re a part of it. Bunk? Of 
course. But two-thirds of everything is bunk. 
And where will you find it different? England 
with its king and parades of royalty — was any¬ 
thing ever more bunk than the divine right of 
kings? Take it apart and look at it for a second: 

[185] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

one of the silliest superstitions in the world. In 
France — that flashy, money-bitten little land of 
hard-boiled shopkeepers and illiterate peasants. 
All this highbrow talk of French culture is more 
bunk. They think in the past. Most of our re¬ 
ligious beliefs, too, are bunk. And our modern 
artists and novelists parading their dirty minds 
for us to applaud — that’s bunk. But what can 
you do about it? It takes thousands of years 
sometimes for one little bit of bunk to wear it¬ 
self out of a job before anything is found to — er 
— replace it. I tell you, Chlo, you must accept 
some things at face value whether or not. Any 
logic ends in absurdity or sidetracks itself sooner 
or later. 

— And marriage, Chlo, simmers right down 
to the same problem. It looks dull and prosaic as a 
day-after-day affair, perhaps. But you can’t beat 
the game; in the long run you can’t beat it. I 
tell you, Chlo, from the bottom of my heart, I 
don’t believe any one on earth in a civilized so¬ 
ciety ever beat it and got away with it. No mat¬ 
ter how strong and self-sufficient, sooner or later 
loneliness stalks in. And it must be a — er — 
frightful thing to grow old without a companion. 
I know I don’t want to grow old alone. Neither 
religion nor philosophy nor money can supply 
the goal that will take the place of sharing your 

[ 186 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

all with some one right here and now. Monot¬ 
onous and dull it may be, and a gamble, but 
there’s nothing ever been found to take its place, 
that’s certain.— 


[187] 


11 


Chlo was sitting up. Her body was bent 
forward and her hands gripped the side of 
the bed as she loo\ed with intent concentra¬ 
tion across the narrow space at the vague, 
shadowy outlines of the bed opposite whence 
issued at regular intervals of slight duration, 
the audible breathing of a heavy sleeper. 
She sat, motionless. 

— And so — and so, Chlo, I’m asking you to 
marry me. I love you and I believe I can make 
you happy. Perhaps it’s a gamble, but it’s a 
gamble that is worth taking. I don’t mean a 
gamble on my part; I’m sure of the way I feel. 

[188] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

I mean a gamble for you, and I say so frankly 
because I don’t want to attempt to force you into 
something against your will and which you may 
be sorry for later. But we have so much to give 
each other and that’s what counts. You have a 
fineness, an — er — innate culture, an instinct for 
the right thing, the beautiful thing, a — a some¬ 
thing, Chlo, I don’t know how to say it — I’ve 
never tried to think this out before or put it into 
words — but something I’ve missed all my life. 
I haven’t spent much of my time reclining on a 
bed of roses and I know I’m pretty crude and 
rough and tumble when it comes to a lot of, but 
— well, you know what I mean — things that 
count with you. I’m decent at bottom, I think, 
Chlo, and I know I haven’t got much to offer you 
that you’re interested in. I don’t mean exactly 
that either, but — but — dammit — what I mean 
to say is: I’m lonely, Chlo, I’m so downright, 
deadly lonely that nothing else means anything 
at all with you out of the picture. I’ve still got 
plenty of money. I could retire to-morrow if I 
wanted, but what’s the use? I wouldn’t get any 
kick out of it, and as it is I feel sometimes like 
I’m in a treadmill, walking around and around 
in a circle. I want a companion. I want you. 
I want to share what I have with you. I want to 
give to you, and I want you to teach me. For I 

[189] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

know you’re lonely, too, Chlo. I can’t help but 
see it, and I’m miserable w^hen I see you un¬ 
happy. What do you want to do? What would 
you like to do? Where would you like to go? 
Let me help you, Chlo. No — help me. Let’s 
don’t pass marriage by — give me a chance to 
show my love for you. All that I’ve worked and 
struggled over — I never quite realized before — 
but it was just for this: for you, for us. Let’s 
don’t lose it, Chlo, let’s don’t play with a chance 
at happiness just for some ideas that have never 
been proved. Let’s live in our time where we 
belong. You don’t want to go on living as you 
do now. Three girls cooped in a flat, working in 
offices all day, back to their flat every evening — 
you — you are too — er — much of a person to 
be submerged that way, too big, too precious, to 
waste your gifts in such a struggle. 

— I make no demands, I exact nothing, Chlo, I 
want to give you the freedom to expand as you 
want, to make your own happiness, to write if you 
wish, to study or play as you will. Only I beg — 
and I’m begging from the bottom of my heart — 
for the chance to offer you the happiness that I 
believe can lie in a normal, sane married life. Am 
I making a fool of myself? I’ve never asked a 
woman to marry me before. I’ve never begged 
this way for anything from any one before. But I 

[190] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

have no shame about my feeling; it’s honest and 
no fly-by-night. I need you. I know I’m not worth 
kissing the tip of your shoe. I know you laugh at 
me. I know I get on your nerves sometimes — 
but I’m willing to make every effort a man can 
make to make you happy. I don’t know, Chlo — 
I’ve been in love with you ever since I first met 
you in the office. I was afraid to admit it to my¬ 
self for a long time. You seemed so cool and 
aloof, you made me feel awkward, and I’ve wanted 
so much to show up well before you that it sort 
of made me — er — self-conscious and say the 
wrong things and look like a fool. That’s because 
I’ve loved you so much, I think. I’m not such a 
machine as you have put me down. I want you. 
I need you. And somehow — I don’t know — I 
feel we need each other. Give me a chance, Chlo. 
Give me the chance to try to make you happy; 
that’s all I — 

What is he doing to me? I have been blindly 
and hopelessly feeling my way through a cloudy 
maze of treacherous growth and suddenly I stum¬ 
ble forth on firm ground warmed by the clear, 
sane light of a brilliant sun. That is the feeling 
that grows within me as I listen to }. P. Life 
seems all at once so simple and so — so what? 
Worth while. Yes, it seems to loom before me 
rich with a meaning. I dream — a dream with- 

[191] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

out words, without thought — an emotion, vague, 
indefinable. Yet so overpowering that for once no 
fear of its honesty invades. I can see it all so 
clearly now. That was the first photograph my 
mind snapped, I can see it all so clearly now. He 
is right. I have been playing with fire. Frittering. 
Living in a world that never was and never can 
be. I have avoided facts, have been afraid of them. 
Gordon? His bare studio. Bare, drab walls with 
one lone painting of — of shapeless women bath¬ 
ing. It’s unhealthy. It’s — there’s something — 
it’s wrong — it’s not sane. Choking. How could I 
have ever dreamed of — no, no, why it would have 
been impossible. How long could such an ab¬ 
normal relationship have lasted? Marriage and 
a normal life, a contemporary life. What more 
is there? After all — great heavens, how J. P.’s 
words did turn me inside out that night. He was 
a great calm man seeing life wisely and whole. 
He was sanity and rest; a mighty oak that re¬ 
sisted storms and sheltered. Good Lord. And I. 
I strayed and tired and sick of — oh! And then — 
There is Gordon standing over our table star¬ 
ing down at me, pale, grim. Yes, there is Gor¬ 
don. I look at him and am not surprised. I do 
not question why he has left his table — and his 
girl — and why he stands there looking down at 
me grimly. He is there and it does not make any 

[192] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

difference. Am I in a trance? Gordon means 
so little to me at that minute. There are other 
things. Marriage and sanity and contemporaries. 
And there is Gordon staring at me and I wait for 
him to speak. No, I do not wait. I merely sit 
looking at him and he is not clear to me for I 
am partly elsewhere. 

— Chlo, I surrender. I give up. I have stood 
it as long as I can. I want you too much. I’ll 
do anything you say. I don’t know whether 
you’ve haunted me purposely or not, but never 
mind, dear, you win. Send this fellow home and 
I’ll shoot Peggie on her way — I must talk to 
you now, dear — 

J. P. is on his feet. 

— I beg your pardon, sir, just what do you 
mean by this high-handed ordering ? — 

Gordon does not shift his gaze from my eyes. 
He answers softly. 

— Miss Harding is my fiancee, and I am very, 
very anxious to speak to her alone.— 

They are standing before me, Gordon and 
J. P. I see them sharply outlined before me, wait¬ 
ing. But I am only partly there. A great light 
is shining within me. Sanity and a normal life. 
Contemporary. 

— I’m sorry, Gordon, I’m going to marry Mr. 
Mitchell. — 

[193] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

Can there be such a thing as mind? What is 
it? When does it show itself? Can our actions 
be more than simply automatic? All my ideas 
and plans twisted and broken in an instant. A 
thoughtless, emotional instant. How could I? 
How could I ? And yet — the days that followed. 
I was happy. I was scared but I was happy. At 
last I’m being sensible, I repeated to myself 
again and again, I am being sensible and normal. 
And Cordie and Willa were so pleased and 
thought it so wonderful. The excitement, the 
rush, they overwhelmed me. No, damn it, Chlo, 
be honest wth yourself for once in your life. 
You merely went into it as you do everything. 
Through expediency. The easiest way out. Yes, 
that’s the whole thing. I suppose I saw a simple 
way of shifting my troubles. My troubles! My 
troubles . . . troubles . . . troub . . . 


Daylight .pouring through old-fashioned 
French windows fell upon two figures ly¬ 
ing fast asleep in twin beds. In the morn¬ 
ing glow the walls of the room showed a 
soft cream against the blue-white woodwor\ 
and lofty ceiling. A dar\ blue rug covered 

[i94] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

the floor and the curtains were of heavy gold 
sil\ gauze. The room was old and had an 
air of repose. A faint breeze stirred the cur¬ 
tains . 

Suddenly a woman sat up in one of the 
beds . She stretched out her arms, stifled a 
yawn, said, Oh, dear! and bent over to loo\ 
at a small cloc\ sitting on the nearby table. 

— Oh, dear! she exclaimed a second time 
and jumped out of bed. As she threw on her 
\imono and rushed towards the bathroom, 
she stopped on the way to give a quic\ tug 
at the tousled hair of a man lying in the 
other bed. 

— Hey, get up, old darling, it's awfully 

late . — 

She leaned over, gave him a hurried \iss 
on the nose and fluttered out of the room. 

The man lay on his bac\ gazing at the 
high ceiling. He heard the woman humming 
to herself in the bathroom and grinned. 

Before he had finished bathing and dress¬ 
ing, the woman called from the other end of 
the apartment. 

[ *95 ] 


ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR 

— Oh, J. P., breakfast is on the table. — 
— Coming, Chlo. 

As the man pulled back his chair and 
picked up the morning paper, the woman 
remarked, — what a beautiful day! It was 
so terrifically hot last night. I couldn't get 
to sleep for a long time. I thought Yd 
smother. The heat made me jittery. — 
Breakfast over, the couple walked arm in 
arm to the door. 

— What are you doing to-day? — 

— Oh, I thought Yd do a little shopping 
later this morning, then drop by the office 
and pick V ou U P f or l unc h. — 

They kf ss ed. 

— Okay- Good bye, dear. — 

— Good bye, dear. — 


[196] 






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